The high-affinity interleukin 8 receptor gene (IL8RA) maps to the 2q33-q36 region of the human genome: cloning of a pseudogene (IL8RBP) for the low-affinity receptor.

The selective amplification by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) of gene fragments corresponding to new G-protein-coupled receptors resulted in the cloning of 18 orphan members of this gene family. Of these, three human clones amplified from genomic DNA (HGMP03, HGMP04, and HGMP05) were shown to be structurally related. Genomic clones corresponding to HGMP03 and HGMP05 were isolated and their putative coding region sequenced. Following the characterization of two interleukin 8 (IL-8) receptors, HGMP03 appeared to encode the high-affinity IL-8 receptor, whereas the partial clone HGMP04 encodes the low-affinity IL-8 receptor. Comparison with the cDNA sequence suggests that the high-affinity receptor gene is split by an intron in the 5' untranslated region. The high-affinity receptor gene was mapped by in situ hybridization to the 2q33-q36 region of the human genome. The HGMP05 locus turned out to be a pseudogene for the low-affinity IL-8 receptor (87% identity), with multiple frameshifts and point mutations introducing stop codons. Southern blotting on genomic DNA did not allow the further detection of related loci in the human genome.