Molecular Cloning of Bovine Amelogenin cDna

Abstract

Molecular cloning of a bovine amelogenin cDNA was accomplished by construction of a cDNA expression library (λgt11 cDNA library) from the bovine ameloblast mRNA and then screening of the library with antibodies to bovine amelogenins. The complete primary structure of an amelogenin was deduced from cloned cDNA. One of the cDNA clones isolated from a bovine ameloblast phage λgt11 library had an 864-base-pair-long insert that encoded a protein with 216 amino acid residues. This cDNA clone appears to represent the complete coding region of amelogenin mRNA, including a putative AUG initiation codon and a signal peptide sequence. The predicted bovine amelogenin sequence has 87% amino acid homology with murine amelogenin.