Identification of a novel transcript variant of the human CD6 gene that lacks exon 9.

CD6 is a transmembrane glycoprotein, mainly expressed by all T cells and a subset of B cells. It has been shown that the human CD6 gene has six reported transcript isoforms, including full length and Δ3 isoforms. These are CD6a, CD6b, CD6c, CD6d, CD6e and CD6Δ3. In every isoform, particular exon(s) are known to be alternatively spliced out. In our findings, we observed a novel transcript isoform of CD6, where exon 9 is spliced out. Semi-qPCR and nucleotide sequencing confirmed the presence of a novel isoform of CD6 i.e. CD6f in human mononuclear cells. Quantitative expression showed significant high expression of CD6f over the full length transcript variant i.e. CD6a. Interestingly, their expressions get further increased upon polyclonal activation.