Deer antler tissue contains two types of bone morphogenetic protein 4 mRNA transcripts.

Previously we isolated a bone morphogenetic protein 4 (BMP-4) cDNA from human prostate cancer cells and found that the 5' noncoding exon 1 of this BMP-4 cDNA was different from that of human bone cell BMP-4 cDNA. Recently we identified two alternate exon 1s, 1A and 1B, for BMP-4 gene by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assays from fetal rat calvarial osteoblasts. In order to further examine alternate exon 1 usage in the BMP-4 gene, we screened deer antler tissue cDNA library. We isolated two types of cDNA clones encoding BMP-4 from this deer antler cDNA library. Sequencing of these clones have revealed a single open reading frame encoding a 408 amino acid protein. Comparison of 5' noncoding exon 1 portion of these cDNA sequences with those of human bone and prostate BMP-4 cDNA sequences and mouse BMP-4 genomic DNA sequence demonstrated that deer antler tissue expresses both exon 1A and 1B containing BMP-4 mRNA transcripts. This suggests that BMP-4 gene may contain alternate promoters or alternate splicing sites in deer antler tissue.