Subject: Novel kinase: STLK Genomic sequence analysis predicts a novel fly kinase: Stlk (Ste20-like kinase) is a member of the Ste20 (MAP4K) family of kinases that also includes Drosophila genes msn, mbt, ninaC and DPak, and is most similar to STLK5 and STLK6, two yet-to-be-published human kinases, and the Y52D3.1 gene of C. elegans. The peptide sequence has been published in TrEMBL (accession P83098). It was created by a HMM search of the genome sequence followed by gene extension using genewise with the human STLKs as templates. The sequence is partially confirmed by 10 ESTs: 9 from embryonic sources (7 from the LD library, 2 from RE) and one from ovary (GM library). The peptide reading frame is open at the C-terminus and probably incomplete; two of the ESTs have mate pairs (LD05623.3prime and LD01213.3prime) which map to the genomic sequence starting 1.5 kb downstream of the end of the peptide and probably are part of the 3' UTR of the gene. These sequences may be useful in designing RT-PCR primers to find the C terminus of the gene. The gene has three exons and maps to 41F1. \-Gerard Manning.