Cloning and identification of a novel ubiquitin-like protein, BMSC-UbP, from human bone marrow stromal cells.

Ubiquitin is one of phylogenetically well-conserved proteins in all eukaryotes. Ubiquitin-dependent modification of protein contributes to fine regulation of cellular biological processes. Using large-scale screening of human bone marrow stromal cell (BMSC) cDNA library, we isolated a full-length cDNA of 1352 bp encoding 380 amino acids with a ubiquitin domain (UBQ), which was designed as bone marrow stromal cell-derived ubiquitin-like protein (BMSC-UbP). In addition to UBQ domain at its N-terminus, BMSC-UbP also possesses a ubiquitin-associated domain at its C-terminus, sharing moderate homology to some ubiquitin-like proteins such as UBIN, Chap1, and ubiquilin. BMSC-UbP localizes at chromosome 15q22.3-q23 as confirmed by blast search in human genome. BMSC-UbP mRNA is widely expressed in human multiple tissues and various tumor cell lines. Moreover, BMSC-UbP mRNA decreased in BMSC stimulated with PMA and increased in HL60 cells stimulated with LPS, suggesting that BMSC-UbP might play roles in regulation of BMSC function or cell differentiation through an evocator- and cell-specific pattern.