Cloning cDNA Coding for a Putative Calcitonin Gene- Related Peptide Receptor Submitted

Calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) has been shown to interact specifically with at least two types of receptors. Cloning of either receptor would be a major breakthrough since this knowledge could be applied to the development of drugs to augment or antagonize CGRP's actions in the body. With this goal in mind, Fisher and Chatterjee used an approach applying cDNA library screening combined with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to obtain a partial cDNA sequence corresponding to a gene that could code for the CGRP receptor. A new project to find the entire sequence involved screening a human liver cDNA library using a putative CGRP receptor gene-specific probe. PCR was used as a means of verifying the presence of the correct cDNA. The cDNA was prepared for amplification and subsequent sequencing by in vivo excision. The DNA sequence that was finally obtained apparently was not the same sequence as the putative CGRP receptor DNA and contained no homology to any known gene.