THE ORPHAN G-PROTEIN-COUPLED RECEPTOR-ENCODING GENE V28 IS CLOSELY-RELATED TO GENES FOR CHEMOKINE RECEPTORS AND IS EXPRESSED IN LYMPHOID AND NEURAL TISSUES

A polymerase chain reaction (PCR) strategy with degenerate primers was used to identify novel G-protein-coupled receptor-encoding genes from human genomic DNA. One of the isolated clones, termed V28, showed high sequence similarity to the genes encoding human chemokine receptors for monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (MCP-1) and macrophage inflammatory protein 1 alpha (MIP-1 alpha)/RANTES, and to the rat orphan receptor-encoding gene RBS11. When RNA was analyzed by Northern blot, V28 was found to be most highly expressed in neural and lymphoid tissues. Myeloid cell lines, particularly THP.1 cells, showed especially high expression of V28, We have mapped V28 to human chromosome 3p21-3pter, near the MIP-1 alpha/RANTES receptor-encoding gene.