Department of Biology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla 92093-0319.
Degenerate DNA oligomers coding for highly conserved regions of the voltage-gated calcium channel were synthesized for the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using DNA from a human brain cDNA library as template. PCR amplified a 640-bp DNA fragment from the human brain cDNA library. Sequencing revealed that this fragment encodes part of a protein highly homologous to a subtype of the dihydropyridine-sensitive calcium channel cloned from rabbit heart and rat brain. Southern analysis of panels of somatic cell hybrids mapped the 640-bp fragment, CACNL1A1, to human chromosome 12p13-pter.