Assignment of the neuropsin gene (Prss19) to mouse chromosome band 7B4 by in situ hybridization.

Neuropsin is a serine protease which belongs to the trypsin/ kallikrein superfamily (Chen et al., 1995; Shimizu et al., 1998; Yoshida et al., 1998; Kishi et al., 1999). Several lines of evidence suggests that neuropsin is important in neural plasticity in the brain (Chen et al., 1995; Okabe et al., 1996; Momota et al., 1998). Genomic organization of the human neuropsin gene is very similar to those for the trypsin/kallikrein gene superfamily (Yoshida et al., 1998). To elucidate genomic organization of the mouse neuropsin gene, we cloned the mouse neuropsin gene (Prss19) and assigned its location on chromosome 7B4. This region is close to the kallikrein gene cluster and highly homologous with human chromosome 19q13.3→q13.4 (Stubbs et al., 1996), suggesting that the neuropsin gene and kallikrein genes may have evolved from a common ancestor. Materials and methods