Characterization, evolutionary relationships, and chromosome location of processed mouse HPRT pseudogene

Studies on a cell line with amplified copies of the mouse hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT) gene and HPRT gene transfer experiments revealed the existence of a nonfunctional HPRT-related sequence in the mouse genome. This sequence was isolated and found to be a processed HPRT pseudogene. With the exception of a small internal deletion, the pseudogene is believed to comprise a complete reverse transcript of HPRT mRNA, although the 3′ end of the pseudogene was lost in the cloning process. A probe from a region flanking the mouse pseudogene was used to investigate the evolutionary relationships of mammalian HPRT pseudogenes. The pseudogenes in mouse and Chinese hamster appear to have a common origin, but no homology to any of the four known human HPRT pseudogenes was detected. A pseudogene-linked restriction fragment length polymorphism was used to map the pseudogene to the distal end of mouse chromosome 17.