Structure of a mammalian TBP (TATA-binding protein) gene: isolation of the mouse TBP genome

TBP is a general transcription factor required for all classes of eukaryotic genes. C-terminal 180 amino acid residues which are necessary for basal transcription were highly conserved among species, whereas N-terminal residues of TBP are diverse (1-7). As for the TBP genome structure, only those of S.pombe (3), S.cerevisiae (2) and A.castellanii (7) have been studied, so far. In this report, we describe organization of the mouse TBP gene. The mouse TBP gene was found to extend over 18 kbp and consist of seven exons to code for the TBP. In other organisms, S.cerevisiae has no intron (2), but higher eukaryotes such as S.pombe (3) and A. castellanii (7) have three and two exons, respectively. Nucleotide numbers were newly given so as the A base in the first methionine codon to be 1. The C-terminal domain was split by five introns. Interestingly, rather similar results were obtained in the cases of S.pombe (3) and A. castellanii