MOLECULAR-CLONING OF RAT JAK3, A NOVEL MEMBER OF THE JAK FAMILY OF PROTEIN-TYROSINE KINASES

We have cloned and sequenced a cDNA (JAK3) encoding a novel member of the JAK family of protein tyrosine kinases. JAK3 was identified by RT-PCR of rat mesangial cells using degenerate oligonucleotide primers, and a full-length clone was isolated from a rat spleen cDNA library. The primary structure of JAK3 showed cDNA with an open reading frame of 1,100 amino acids which comprises th PTK catalytic domain and a second kinase-related domain characteristic for JAK kinase. JAK3 was phylogenetically shown to be most closely related to JAK2 among the previously known JAK family members, JAK1, JAK2 and Tyk2. Southern analysis revealed that JAK3 is a single copy gene and well conserved in the vertebral genome. Northern analysis indicated that the 4.0 kb mRNA was transcribed in a variety of tissues including spleen, lung, kidney and intestine.