Cloning of a Highly Conserved Human Protein Serine-Threonine Phosphatase Gene from the Glioma Candidate Region on Chromosome 19q13.3

Allelic loss studies have suggested that a glioma tumor suppressor gene resides in a 425-kb region of chromosome 19q, telomeric to D19S219 and centromeric to D19S112. Exon amplification of a cosmid contig spanning this region yielded four exons with high homology to a rat protein serine-threonine phosphatase from a cosmid approximately 100 kb telomeric to D19S219. Isolation of a near full-length cDNA from a human fetal brain cDNA library revealed a protein serine-threonine phosphatase with a tetratricopeptide motif, almost identical to human PPP5C (PP5) and highly homologous to rat PPT. Northern blotting demonstrated expression in most human tissues, including brain. Primary and cultured gliomas were studied for genetic alterations in this gene using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, routine Southern blots, and genomic DNA- and RNA-based single-strand conformation polymorphism analysis. Genomic alterations were not detected in any of the gliomas, and all studied gliomas expressed the gene, suggesting that this phosphatase is not the putative chromosome 19q glioma tumor suppressor gene.