Assignment of the kinesin family member 4 genes (KIF4A and KIF4B) to human chromosome bands Xq13.1 and 5q33.1 by in situ hybridization.

The murine KIF4 gene, a member of the kinesin superfamily, is an anterograde microtubule-based motor protein for transporting membranous organelles (Sekine et al., 1994). The recent finding that it binds to murine retroviral gag polyproteins implies that the binding might play an important role in virus assembly (Kim et al., 1998). A combination of RT-PCR with cDNA library screening led to identification of human KIF4 (Genbank accession number AF071592). The nucleotide sequence comprised part of the 5) untranslated region (UTR), an open reading frame (ORF) encoding 1232 amino acids, and the entire 3) UTR. Homologies with the mouse KIF4 were 82 % and 85 % for nucleic acids and amino acids, respectively. Although it was found that human KIF4 associates with HIV gag proteins (Tang et al., in press), the function of human KIF4 is yet to be determined. Here we report the mapping of the KIF4 genes to human chromosomes Xq13.1 and 5q33.1.