Characterization of a mouse interferon gene locus I. Isolation of a cluster of four α-interferon genes

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Abstract
A BALB/c mouse genoinic library was screened with a murine interferon α2 (MuIFN-α2 cDNA coding region fragment. Eight clones were isolated which contain different mouse chromosomal segments related to the MuIFN-α2 probe and a 28 kilobase (kb) region of mouse genomic DNA containing four different MuIFN-α genes (α1, α4, α5 and α6 was identified characterized; an intergenic 1000 nucleotide long conserved sequence was found to be associated with three of these four a genes, indicating that this α-IFN gene cluster evolved through tandem duplications. Sequence analysis revealed the absence of a polyadenylation site in the 3′ untranslated region of MuIFN-α1 and showed that one of the genes (α4) contains an internal deletion of 5 amino acids in the coding region.