Department of Chemical Pathology, Adelaide Medical Centre for Women and Children, South Australia.
The human lysosomal storage disorder fucosidosis results from the deficiency of alpha-L-fucosidase, a lysosomal enzyme essential for the catabolism of oligosaccharides containing alpha-L-fucosides. cDNA clones coding for human alpha-L-fucosidase have been isolated from lambda gt10 and lambda gt11 cDNA libraries derived from human liver, placenta and colon. Compilation of cDNA sequences results in a nucleotide sequence of 2053 base pairs encoding alpha-L-fucosidase. The sequence contains an open reading frame of 461 amino acids beginning with the first in-frame methionine and includes 439 amino acids which comprise the mature protein in addition to a hydrophobic signal peptide sequence of 22 amino acids.