[Bioinformatics analysis of autophagy 5 gene structure].

In order to study the relationship between autophagy and apoptosis, APG5 gene structure was revealed by bioinformatics analysis and meantime a new isoform resulted from alternative splicing of the hAPG5 gene was confirmed, which was hereby designated as human autophagy 5 beta (hAPG5 beta; LOCUS AF293841, GenBank). We cloned and sequenced the cDNAs from fetal brain and B cell cDNA libraries using the known hAPG5 cDNA open reading frame sequences as primers. The cDNA obtained from the human fetal brain cDNA library was identical to the known hAPG5 cDNA. However, the cDNA from adult brain cDNA library was 129 bp shorter in length, lacking the sequence corresponding to those from positions 434 to 563 of the hAPG5 cDNA. Through search in public database and sequence comparisons and assembly 4 related sequences, APG5 genomic sequence was obtained. We found that the hAPG5 gene had 8 exons, and those sequences missing in hAPG5 beta cDNA exactly corresponded to exon 3. By bioinformatics software, the structure of introns, exons, splicing sites, promoter and polyA were demonstrated. Moreover, we were able to express both hAGP5 and 5 beta cDNA clones in human hepatocytes and HeLa cells using pEGFP-C1 vector. In conclusion, our data indicate that a systematic bioinformatics method of finding protein diversity from alternative splicing is a good approach in post-genome biology.