Alternatively-spliced p53 mRNA in the FAA-HTC1 rat hepatoma cell line without the splice site mutations.

A novel mutation of the p53 gene has been found in a rat hepatoma cell line, FAA-HTC1. This cell line carried two kinds of abnormal p53 transcripts; one lacked the exon 8 sequence, and the other had a single base substitution G to T which resulted in a new stop codon in exon 8. In the genomic DNA, this base substitution in exon 8 was present, indicating that both transcripts were transcribed from the mutated gene. No mutation was detected in its two flanking introns. In this cell line, the exon-deleted transcript seems to be generated by exon skipping due to an unknown mechanism other than splice site mutations.