Small Nuclear Ribonucleoprotein Polypeptide F (SNRPF)

By performing RACE on a HeLa cell cDNA library using primers based on the partial protein sequence of SNRPF, Hermann et al. (1995) cloned SNRPF cDNAs. The predicted 86-amino acid protein contains 16% acidic residues and has a calculated pI of 4.6. Sequence comparisons of the 8 human Sm proteins indicated that they share 2 homologous regions, which the authors termed Sm motifs. The Sm motifs are also highly conserved in the putative snRNP core proteins of a variety of other organisms. Using coimmunoprecipitation studies, Hermann et al. (1995) demonstrated that the Sm motifs are involved, at least in part, in Sm protein-protein interactions. Northern blot analysis revealed that the SNRPF gene is expressed as an approximately 0.5-kb mRNA in HeLa cells.