Characterization of an intronless human calmodulin-like pseudogene

We report the isolation and characterization of a human genomic clone encoding a calmodulin-like pseudogene. It contains an open reading frame of 444 nucleotides, not interrupted by introns. The nucleotide sequence of the open reading frame shows 80%, 71% and 69% identity to the previously reported human calmodulin cDNAs λht6 [17], hCWP [22], and λhCE1 [23], respectively. The derived amino acid sequence has only 85% identity to vertebrate calmodulin, but shows four potentially functional Ca²⁺-binding loops. In the human tissues tested, this pseudogene is not expressed, though gene structure including promoter elements and a putative polyadenylation site seems to be intact.