Disease relevance of e

• Using Ebony protein either expressed in Escherichia coli or in Schneider S2 cells, we provide evidence for its substrate specificity and reaction mechanism [1].

High impact information on e

• We propose that in the Drosophila eye Ebony is involved in the transmission process by inactivation of histamine through beta-alanyl conjugation [1].
• Insight into the reaction mechanism stems from mutational analysis of an invariant serine that disclosed Ebony as a multienzyme with functional analogy to the starting modules of NRPSs [1].
• To discriminate expression of Tan and Ebony in retina and optic neuropils, we raised antisera against specific Tan peptides [2].
• This local proximity supports a model for Drosophila visual synaptic transmission in which Tan and Ebony interact biochemically in a putative histamine inactivation and recycling pathway in Drosophila [2].
• A close proximity of Tan and Ebony expression is evident in lamina cartridges, where three epithelial glia cells envelop the six photoreceptor terminals R1-R6 [2].

Biological context of e

• An open reading frame encoding the putative Ebony protein of 98.5 kDa exhibits homology to a family of peptide synthetases (Stachelhaus and Marahiel, 1995), in good correlation with the proposed function as beta-alanyl-dopamine synthetase [3].

Anatomical context of e

• Colocalization of Ebony with neuronal or glial cell markers in frozen sections showed non-neuronal expression of ebony in the lamina and medulla neuropiles [4].

References