Fusion of a novel gene, ELKS, to RET due to translocation t(10;12)(q11;p13) in a papillary thyroid carcinoma

✍ Scribed by Tomoko Nakata; Yutaka Kitamura; Kazuo Shimizu; Shigeo Tanaka; Minoru Fujimori; Shiro Yokoyama; Kouichi Ito; Mitsuru Emi

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 144 KB
• Volume: 25
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1045-2257
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1098-2264(199906)25:2<97::aid-gcc4>3.0.co;2-l

✦ Synopsis

In papillary thyroid carcinomas, the genes for receptor-type tyrosine kinase, RET or TRKA, are sometimes rearranged, resulting in fusion of its tyrosine kinase domain to 5Ј portions of several activating genes. In a papillary thyroid carcinoma, we identified a novel gene (ELKS), the 5Ј portion of which is fused to the RET gene by gene rearrangement due to the translocation t(10;12)(q11;p13). Subsequent cloning of the ELKS cDNA revealed that ELKS encodes a novel 948 amino acid peptide and is expressed ubiquitously in human tissues. The presence of multiple coiled-coil domains in the ELKS product suggests that the ELKS protein forms dimers. Since the tyrosine kinase of RET is activated by dimerization that occurs when its ligands bind to the receptor, fusion of RET with the 5Ј dimerization domains of ELKS would activate its cytoplasmic tyrosine kinase constitutively in papillary thyroid carcinomas.