CLONING OF A CDNA-ENCODING HUMAN ALDH7, A NEW MEMBER OF THE ALDEHYDE DEHYDROGENASE FAMILY

Aldehyde dehydrogenases (ALDH; EC 1.2.1.3) are a family of isozymes which have been suggested to play a major role in the detoxification of aldehydes generated by alcohol metabolism and lipid peroxidation. Five non-allelic ALDH genes, encoding the ALDH1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 isozymes, have previously been identified and cloned in our laboratory. In this paper, we report the cloning and sequencing of a cDNA encoding a new human ALDH (ALDH7). Degenerate oligodeoxyribonucleotides derived from conserved regions of known ALDH cDNAs amplified a 408-bp product from human kidney total RNA by the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) procedures [Hsu et al., J. Biol. Chem. 266 (1992) 3030-3037]. This PCR product was subcloned, selected and used as a probe to screen a human kidney cDNA library. The full-length human kidney cDNA (ALDH7) is 2791 bp in length and contains an open reading frame encoding 468 amino acids (aa). The deduced sequence of ALDH7 is longer than that of the human stomach ALDH3 by 15 aa at the C terminus. The degree of identity between the two isozymes is 52% with a positional alignment of 453 aa. Northern blot analysis demonstrated that lung is another major tissue expressing ALDH7.