Isolation of duplicated human c-src genes located on chromosomes 1 and 20.

Overview

The oncogene (v-src) of Rous sarcoma virus apparently arose by transduction of the chicken gene known as c-src(chicken). We isolated DNA fragments representative of two src-related loci from recombinant DNA bacteriophage libraries of the human genome. One of these loci, c-src1(human), appeared to direct the synthesis of a 5-kilobase polyadenylated RNA that presumably encodes pp60c-src(human). Probes specific for the other locus, c-src2(human), did not hybridize to polyadenylated RNA prepared from a variety of human cell lines. Partial nucleotide sequence determinations of the loci demonstrated that c-src1(human) is highly related to chicken c-src and that c-src2(human) is slightly more divergent. The sequences imply that the final two coding exons of each human locus are identical in length to those of chicken c-src and that the location of an amber stop codon is unchanged in all three loci. c-src1(human) has been mapped to chromosome 20, and the second locus is located on chromosome 1. We conclude that c-src1(human) is the analog of c-src(chicken) and that the duplicated locus, c-src2(human), may also be expressed.