Proto-oncogene ret Has Cadherin-like Repeats in the Extraeellular Region

Abstract

Amino acid sequences of 90 different cadherin repeats were aligned for six highly conserved segments, and the frequency of occurrence of amino acids at each amino acid position was calculated. Using the frequency of occurrence, further members of the cadherin superfamily were searched in protein database by a method developed previously. It was found that ret proto-oncogene product, a receptor type protein tyrosine kinase, contains cadherin repeats in the extracellular region.