Aberrant splicing of proteolipid protein mRNA in the dysmyelinating jimpy mutant mouse

Abstract

cDNA clones encoding proteolipid protein (PLP) were isolated from a mouse brain library and sequenced. We describe two transcripts arising from the PLP locus by alternative splicing: the major one encodes the 277-amino acid PLP protein and the minor one corresponds to the DM-20 protein, a PLP-like protein of 20,000 Mr that shares both amino and carboxyl regions with PLP. These two transcripts lack ≈70 bases in PLP mRNA from the dysmyelinating jimpy mutant. The deletion spans amino acids 208-232; however, this region is present in the jimpy PLP-encoding gene. We propose that the jimpy mutant suffers a point mutation or the deletion of a few bases in the PLP gene that alters the normal splicing pattern and generates partially deleted PLP transcripts.