Cloning and expression of fibroblast growth factor receptor-1 isoforms in the mouse heart: Evidence for isoform switching during heart development

Basic (b) fibroblast growth factor (FGF) mediates various biological responses including mitogenesis and angiogenesis by binding to specific cell surface receptors of the tyrosine kinase family. The bFGF receptor-1 (FGFR1) exists in short and long isoforms due to alternate RNA splicing. Minor alterations in the amino acid sequence have also led to reports of different FGFR1 isoforms in different tissues even in the same species. In the absence of any sequence for heart FGFR1 and accumulating evidence for a role of bFGF in heart growth and differentiation, we cloned FGFR1 from embryonic mouse hearts. Reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was used to generate full-length short (2259 base pairs) and long (2526 base pairs) forms of FGFR1 cDNAs which generated 86 and 102 kDa proteins, respectively, following in vitro translation. Embryonic mouse heart FGFR1 differed by seven amino acids from thereported sequence for mouse neuroepithelial FGFR1and appeared more similar to human placental FGFR1. A single FGFR1 transcript of ˜4.3 kb was seen in RNA isolated from embryonic as well as adult mouse hearts. There was a decrease (˜8.5-fold) in FGFR1 RNA levels in the adult. The majority of FGFR1 transcripts in the adult as well as embryonic heart contained exon IIIc (FGFR1-IIIc) which is associated with isoforms that display the highest affinity for bFGF. However, the relative ration of short versus long FGFR1 RNA expression was 0.5 in the embryonic heart compared to5.9 in the adult heart. These results indicatethat: (i) structurally distinct short and long FGFR1isoform RNAs are expressed in the embryonic and adult heart; (ii) FGFR1-IIIc is the major formof receptor expressed in the embryonic as well asadult heart; (iii) the transition from the embryoto the adult stage is associated with a decreasebut not absence of FGFR1 RNA expression; and (iv) longFGFR1-isoforms are more abundant in theembryo while short FGFR1 isoforms predominate in the adult.