A human oncogene formed by the fusion of truncated tropomyosin and protein tyrosine kinase sequences

A biologically active complementary DNA clone of a transforming gene present in a human colon carcinoma contains gene sequences of both tropomyosin and a previously unknown protein tyrosine kinase. The predicted protein (641 amino acids) encoded by this oncogene seems to have been formed by a somatic rearrangement that replaced the extracellular domain of a putative transmembrane receptor by the first 221 amino acids of a non-muscle tropomyosin molecule.