Abstract
Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is caused by a mutation in the polycystic kidney disease1 (PKD1) gene, which is responsible for 85% of ADPKD cases. The PKD1 gene encodes a polycystin-1 (PC1) protein that has a large extracellular area containing many polypeptide motifs. The extracellular region of PC1 includes several well-defined peptide domains that show that it has been involved in cell-cell and/or cell-matrix interactions. One of the regions that we focused on in this study is the receptor of the egg jelly (REJ) domain. This study conveys novel findings, in which we utilized a successful methodology to clone and express the REJ protein. The REJ gene is located in many exons separated by introns, which made it impossible to clone the whole REJ region. Therefore, synthetic DNA technology was used to clone a fragment located on exon 15 of the REJ gene. The PCR technology was used to amplify the REJ region by using a universal primer to express the domain located on exon 15 in humans. The REJ from synthetic DNA was cloned by using the phosphoramidite synthetic method. Sequencing technology and bioinformatic tools were applied to confirm the validation of the coding region. The results indicated that we successfully cloned and expressed the REJ protein using the DNA synthesis method instead of the conventional methodology.