Polymorphic Human Insulin-Responsive Glucose-Transporter Gene on Chromosome 17p13

Glucose uptake by heart, skeletal muscle, and adipose tissue is acutely regulated by insulin, which stimulates facilitative glucose transport, at least in part, by promoting the translocation of transporters from an intracellular pool to the plasma membrane. cDNAs encoding the major human insulin-responsive glucose transporter have been isolated and indicate that the insulin-responsive glucose transporter expressed by heart, skeletal muscle, and adipose tissue is a 509–amino acid protein having 65.3, 54.3, and 57.5% identity with the erythrocyte/HepG2, liver, and fetal muscle glucose transporters, respectively. The gene encoding the insulin-responsive glucose transporter (designated GLUT4) was mapped to the p11 → p13 region of the short arm of human chromosome 17 by analyzing its segregation in a panel of reduced human-mouse somatic cell hybrids. In situ hybridization to prometaphase chromosomes indicated that GLUT4 was in band p13. A common two-allele restriction-fragment–length polymorphism (RFLP) was identified with Kpn I, and linkage of this RFLP to other polymorphic DNA markers in this region of chromosome 17 provides a set of probes that will be useful for examining the role of this gene in the pathogenesis of diabetes mellitus.