On the Relationship Between Human Interferon α 1 and β 1 Genes

Abstract

The human interferon α₁ and β₁ (IFN-α and β₁) genes are approximately 56% identical in the nucleotide sequence across the regions coding for the mature proteins. An IFN-α₁ cDNA insert containing such sequences can be used to isolate 15 IFN-β₁, cDNA colonies present in a 2600-strong library in Escherichia coli prepared from polyadenylated RNA extracted from human diploid fibroblasts (FS-4) induced with poly(I) · poly(C). Conversely, a clone containing an IFN-α₁ cDNA exhibited detectable hybridization with an IFN-β₁ probe. One of the IFN-β₁ cDNA clones isolated in these experiments had lost the internal PstI and PvwII sites due to a change at nucleotide 277 from a C to an A. As a consequence, this allele codes for Met-47 instead of Leu-47. Suggestive evidence has been obtained for the presence of this allele in human genomic DNA (IFN-β₁ ^Met-47).