Figure 2From: Incidence and patterns of ALK FISH abnormalities seen in a large unselected series of lung carcinomasCharacterization of novel EML4-ALK transcription variants in a patient with lung adenocarcinoma. This patient had a typical positive break-apart FISH signal pattern of the ALK gene. A) Two transcription variants were detected, derived from a fusion of EML4 exon 17 to the 3′ end portion of ALK exon 20, with 46 base pairs deleted from the 5′ end of ALK exon 20. These two fusion transcripts were from the same gene rearrangement with either a 23-nucleotide or a 6-nucleotide insertion from EML4 intron 17. B) Putative proteins from EML4-ALK fusion transcripts. The transcript with an insertion of 23 nucleotides produced a truncated EML4 protein and no EML4-ALK fusion protein, as a result of an early stop codon. However, the transcript with an insertion of 6 nucleotides produced an EML4-ALK fusion protein, containing the N-terminal region of EML4 and the C-terminal region of ALK with the protein tyrosine kinase domain (PTKc).Back to article page