Complete primary structure of a sea urchin type IV collagen alpha chain and analysis of the 5' end of its gene.

We isolated several overlapping cDNAs from Strongylocentrotus purpuratus coding for a nonfibrillar collagen chain structurally homologous to the vertebrate type IV collagen chains and arbitrarily termed 3 alpha chain. The deduced amino acid sequence of the sea urchin polypeptide includes a 28-residue signal peptide, a 14-residue amino-terminal non-collagenous segment, a triple-helical domain of 1390 residues containing 23 imperfections, and a 226-residue carboxyl-terminal non-collagenous region. Comparison of the sea urchin amino- and carboxyl-terminal non-collagenous domains with those of the vertebrate type IV collagen chains indicated a high level of sequence identity to the alpha 1 (IV) and alpha 5 (IV) chains. This evolutionary relationship was further strengthened by the analysis of the genomic organization of the 5' portion of the sea urchin gene, which also provided the composition of some of the upstream sequences. In addition, this work demonstrated that our gene product is identical to that encoded by the partial cDNA clone recently isolated by others (Wessel, G. M., Etkin, M., and Benson, S. (1991) Dev. Biol. 148, 261-272) who demonstrated its involvement in the biomineralization process of cultured mesenchyme cells.