The canine HMGA1

Due to the emerging advantages of numerous canine diseases as a genetic model for their human orthologs, the dog could join the mouse as the species of choice to unravel genetic mechanisms, e.g. of cancer predisposition, development and progression. However, precondition for such studies is the characterisation of the corresponding canine genes. Human and murine HMGA1 non-histone proteins participate in a wide variety of cellular processes including regulation of inducible gene transcription, integration of retroviruses into chromosomes, and the induction of neoplastic transformation and promotion of metastatic progression of cancer cells. Chromosomal aberrations affecting the human HMGA1 gene at 6p21 were described in several tumours like pulmonary chondroid hamartomas, uterine leiomyomas, follicular thyroid adenomas and others. Over-expression of the proteins of HMGA1 is characteristic for various malignant tumours suggesting a relation between high titer of the protein and the neoplastic phenotype. In this study, we characterised the molecular structure of the canine HMGA1 cDNA, its splice variants and predicted proteins HMGA1a and HMGA1b. Furthermore, we compared the coding sequence(s) (CDS) of both splice variants for 12 different breeds, screened them for single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and characterised a basic expression pattern.