C2441-06P

Rat Anti-CD90 (Thy-1)

Thy-1 was discovered in early 1960s during the search for heterologous antisera against mouse leukemia cells. It was originally named theta (θ) antigen, then Thy-1 (THYmocyte differentiation antigen 1) due to its prior identification in thymocytes (precursors of T cells in the thymus). The human homolog was isolated in 1980 as a 25kDa protein (p25) of T-lymphoblastoid cell line MOLT-3 binding with anti-monkey-thymocyte antisera. The conserved gene and its alleles Thy-1 has been conserved throughout vertebrate evolution and even in some invertebrates, with homologs described in many species like squid, frogs, chickens, mice, rats, dogs, and humans. The Thy-1 gene is located at human chromosome 11q22.3 (mouse chromosome 9qA5.1). Some believe that there may be a functional significance of both this gene and CD3 delta subunit (T3D) mapping to chromosome 11q in man and chromosome 9 in mouse, though there is no homology (in fact this speculation lead to its localization in chromosome 11q-the human chromosome region syntenic to mouse chromosome 9 which harbored T3D). In mouse there are two alleles Thy1.1 (Thy 1a, CD90.1) and Thy1.2 (Thy 1b, CD90.2) which differ by one amino acid at position 108 (arginine in Thy-1.1 and glutamine in Thy-1.2). Thy 1.2 is expressed by most strains of mice, whereas Thy1.1 is expressed by some like AKR/J and PL mouse strains.