Background & objective: Neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL) was a novel member of the lipocalin family. The authors previously found that NGAL was overexpressed in the progress of malignant transformation from human immortalized esophageal epithelial cell line SHEE to esophageal carcinoma cell line SHEEC. However, the regulation mechanism of NGAL overexpression was not known. The objective of this study was to clone 5'-untranslated region(5'-UTR) and 3'untranslated region (3'-UTR) of NGAL in SHEEC and to analyze their structural characters.
Methods: 5'-UTR and 3'-UTR of NGAL were cloned from SHEEC using rapid amplification of cDNA ends(RACE). After sequencing the alignment of their nucleotides was analyzed by BLAST database of NCBI and the potential cis-acting elements in the 3'-UTR were identified by computer analysis.
Results: The authors cloned and sequenced 69 bp 5'-UTR and 147 bp 3'-UTR of NGAL gene on the basis of the previous works and did not find any base pair mutation.
Conclusion: NGAL gene from SHEEC had the entire 5'-UTR and 3'-UTR.