Abstract
N-Acetylgalactosamine 4-sulfotransferase (GalNAc4ST) transfers sulfate to position 4 of nonreducing terminal GalNAc residues. We previously cloned human GalNAc4ST-1 cDNA. In this paper, we report the cloning, characterization and chromosomal mapping of mouse GalNAc4ST-1 and GalNAc4ST-2. Mouse GalNAc4ST-1 and GalNAc4ST-2 contain single open reading frames that predict type II transmembrane proteins composed of 417 and 413 amino acid residues, respectively. The amino acid sequence identity between the two isoforms is 49%. When the cDNA was transfected to COS-7 cells, sulfotransferase activities toward carbonic anhydrase VI and GalNAcβ1-4GlcNAcβ1-octyl were overexpressed, but the sulfotransferase activity toward chondroitin showed no increase over the control level. Northern blot analysis showed that the 2.4 kb messages of GalNAc4ST-1 and GalNAc4ST-2 were strongly expressed in the kidney, where both of the human isoforms were hardly expressed. Reverse transcription-PCR analysis showed that, unlike human GalNAc4ST-1, the expression of mouse GalNAc4ST-1 in the pituitary gland was only marginal, while that of GalNAc4ST-2 in the pituitary gland was as high as that in the kidney. These results suggest that the functions of the two GalNAc4ST isoforms may differ between human and mouse. By fluorescence in situ hybridization, the GalNAc4ST-1 and GalNAc4ST-2 genes were localized to mouse chromosome 7B3 distal-B5 proximal and chromosome 18A2 distal-B1 proximal, respectively.
