Isolation of a novel actin-related gene expressed in low-metastatic PC-14 human lung adenocarcinoma

In this article, we report the identification of differentially expressed genes associated with the metastatic potential of PC-14 human lung adenocarcinoma. The mRNA differential display method was applied to compare mRNAs from six cloned PC-14 cell lines representing different metastatic potentials. A novel gene was identified as being expressed in low-metastatic cells but not in high-metastatic cells. Sequence analysis revealed that this novel gene has an open reading frame of 210 amino acid residues showing 89% amino acid identity with human Arp3, which is one of the actin-related proteins. This gene was designated the Arp11 gene (the 11th Actin-related gene). The Arp11 gene was mapped to human chromosome 7q32-36. Southern blot and PCR analyses show that all of the high-metastatic variant cells have not rearrangements and deletions of Arp11 allele. Expression of the Arp11 gene may regulate the metastatic potential of PC-14 human lung adenocarcinoma.