We have recently identified PARP10 as a novel functional poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase. The gene encoding PARP10 is conserved in vertebrates but no orthologs were found in lower organisms. In addition to the poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase domain, PARP10 possesses several additional sequence motifs, including an RNA recognition motif and two ubiquitin interaction motifs. We characterized the murine genomic locus of the Parp10 gene. We noticed that 3' Parp10 sequences overlapped with the plectin 1 gene in a head-to-tail arrangement. Detailed analyses revealed that the two most 3' Parp10 exons (exons 10 and 11) are also used for plectin 1. While these two exons code for part of the poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase domain in Parp10, they are noncoding for plectin 1 due to the lack of appropriate start codons. Furthermore our findings suggest that at least one of the plectin 1 promoters is located within intron 9 of the Parp10 gene.