Cloning of the cDNA for the deleted syk kinase homologous to ZAP-70 from human basophilic leukemia cell line (KU812).

Syk kinase is one of the protein tyrosine kinases and forms a family with ZAP-70. We isolated two different sized cDNA clones of syk (Syk11 and Syk41) from a cDNA library of human KU812 (human basophilic leukemia cell line). The obtained two clones carried different messages, that Syk41 had a 69 bp-long insertion between the SH2 domain and the kinase domain compared with Syk11. Alignment of the two human syk predicted polypeptides with those of the porcine syk and ZAP-70 revealed that human syk was 5 amino acid longer than the porcine syk at the N-termini and that the insertion of the 23 amino acid found in Syk41 was present in the porcine syk and absent in ZAP-70. Reverse transcribed polymerase chain reaction targeting this region showed that both forms of the polyA RNA were expressed in Jurkat cells, human peripheral leukocytes and also KU812 cells and that the inserted form was dominant.