Homologs of the Caenorhabditis elegans Masculinizing Gene her-1 in C. briggsae and the Filarial Parasite Brugia malayi
| Autor: | Jacquie Schein, Barbara Robertson, Weiqing Li, Adrian Streit, Marco A. Marra, Ibrahim H. Kamal, William B. Wood |
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| Rok vydání: | 1999 |
| Předmět: |
DNA
Complementary Recombinant Fusion Proteins Molecular Sequence Data Disorders of Sex Development Sequence alignment Brugia malayi Animals Genetically Modified Evolution Molecular Species Specificity RNA interference Sequence Homology Nucleic Acid Genetics Animals Amino Acid Sequence Cloning Molecular Caenorhabditis elegans Caenorhabditis elegans Proteins Promoter Regions Genetic Gene Genes Helminth Synteny Expressed sequence tag Sequence Homology Amino Acid biology Helminth Proteins Sex Determination Processes biology.organism_classification Caenorhabditis Sequence Alignment Research Article |
| Zdroj: | Genetics. 152:1573-1584 |
| ISSN: | 1943-2631 |
| DOI: | 10.1093/genetics/152.4.1573 |
| Popis: | The masculinizing gene her-1 in Caenorhabditis elegans (Ce-her-1) encodes a novel protein, HER-1A, which is required for male development. To identify conserved elements in her-1 we have cloned and characterized two homologous nematode genes: one by synteny from the closely related free-living species C. briggsae (Cb-her-1) and the other, starting with a fortuitously identified expressed sequence tag, from the distantly related parasite Brugia malayi (Bm-her-1). The overall sequence identities of the predicted gene products with Ce-HER-1A are only 57% for Cb-HER-1, which is considerably lower than has been found for most homologous briggsae genes, and 35% for Bm-HER-1. However, conserved residues are found throughout both proteins, and like Ce-HER-1A, both have putative N-terminal signal sequences. Ce-her-1 produces a larger masculinizing transcript (her-1a) and a smaller transcript of unknown function (her-1b); both are present essentially only in males. By contrast, Cb-her-1 appears to produce only one transcript, corresponding to her-1a; it is enriched in males but present also in hermaphrodites. Injection of dsRNA transcribed from Cb-her-1 into C. briggsae hermaphrodites (RNA interference) caused XO animals to develop into partially fertile hermaphrodites. Introducing a Cb-her-1 construct as a transgene under control of the C. elegans unc-54 myosin heavy chain promoter caused strong masculinization of both C. briggsae and C. elegans hermaphrodites. Introduction of a similar Bm-her-1 construct into C. elegans caused only very weak, if any, masculinization. We conclude that in spite of considerable divergence the Cb gene is likely to be a functional ortholog of Ce-her-1, while the function of the distantly related Bm gene remains uncertain. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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