Isolation and characterization of human cDNA clones encoding the. alpha. and the. alpha. prime subunits of casein kinase II

Casein kinase II is a widely distributed protein serine/threonine kinase. The holoenzyme appears to be a tetramer, containing two {alpha} or {alpha}{prime} subunits (or one of each) and two {beta} subunits. Complementary DNA clones encoding the subunits of casein kinase II were isolated from a human T-cell {lambda}gt 10 library using cDNA clones isolated from Drosophila melanogasten. One of the human cDNA clones (hT4.1) was 2.2 kb long, including a coding region of 1176 bp preceded by 156 bp (5{prime} untranslated region) and followed by 871 bp (3{prime} untranslated region). The hT4.1 close was nearly identical in size and sequence with a cDNA clone from HepG2 human hepatoma cultured cells. Another of the human T-cell cDNA clones (hT9.1) was 1.8 kb long, containing a coding region of 1053 bp preceded by 171 by (5{prime} untranslated region) and followed by 550 bp (3{prime} untranslated region). Amino acid sequences deduced from these two cDNA clones were about 85% identical. Most of the difference between the two encoded polypeptides was in the carboxy-terminal region, but heterogeneity was distributed throughout the molecules. Partial amino acid sequence was determined in a mixture of {alpha} and {alpha}{prime} subunits from bovine lung casein kinase II. The bovine sequences aligned with the 2 human cDNA-encoded polypeptides with only 2 discrepancies out of 535 amino acid positions. This confirmed that the two human T-cell cDNA clones encoded the {alpha} and {alpha}{prime} subunits of casein kinase II. These studies show that there are two distinct catalytic subunits for casein II ({alpha} and {alpha}{prime}) and that the sequence of these subunits is largely conserved between the bovine and the human.