Assignment of the GPR14 gene coding for the G-protein-coupled receptor 14 to human chromosome 17q25.3 by fluorescent in situ hybridization.

The orphan G-protein-coupled receptors (GPRs) constitute an abundant family of membrane receptors of high pharmacological interest (Wilson et al., 1998). The NCBI BLASTX analysis revealed that partial sequence of our NotI linking clone NB1-680 isolated from a human NotI linking library (Zabarovsky et al., 1994) displays 78% identity with rat Gpr14 (Marchese et al., 1995) in a 123 aa overlap. The sequenced region was extended to 1714 bp. This sequence reveals a 389 aa open reading frame with high similarity to GPRs. Recently a new member of this family, human GPR14, has been cloned (Ames et al., 1999). This gene is expressed mainly in cardiovascular tissue and the GPR14 protein is able to mobilize intracellular Ca2+ in response to human urotensin-II and effectively constricts arteries. The translated sequence of NB1-680 is 100% identical to GPR14 protein in a 389 aa overlap (or 99% over a 1,166-bp overlap, two nucleotide changes). The only amino acid difference is Asp 235 in our protein instead of Ala 235 in GPR14. Most probably this difference reflects polymorphism and thus it means that our NB1-680 contains the GPR14 gene.