Gene sharing by delta-crystallin and argininosuccinate lyase.
The lens structural protein delta-crystallin and the metabolic enzyme argininosuccinate lyase ( ASL; L-argininosuccinate arginine-lyase, EC 4.3.2.1) have striking sequence similarity. We have demonstrated that duck delta-crystallin has enormously high ASL activity, while chicken delta-crystallin has lower but significant activity. The lenses of these birds had much greater ASL activity than other tissues, suggesting that ASL is being expressed at unusually high levels as a structural component. In Southern blots of human genomic DNA, chicken delta 1-crystallin cDNA hybridized only to the human ASL gene; moreover, the two chicken delta-crystallin genes accounted for all the sequences in the chicken genome able to cross-hybridize with a human ASL cDNA, with preferential hybridization to the delta 2 gene. Correlations of enzymatic activity and recent data on mRNA levels in the chicken lens suggest that ASL activity depends on expression of the delta 2-crystallin gene. The data indicate that the same gene, at least in ducks, encodes two different functions, an enzyme (ASL) and a structural protein (delta-crystallin), although in chickens specialization and separation of functions may have occurred.[1]References
- Gene sharing by delta-crystallin and argininosuccinate lyase. Piatigorsky, J., O'Brien, W.E., Norman, B.L., Kalumuck, K., Wistow, G.J., Borras, T., Nickerson, J.M., Wawrousek, E.F. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (1988) [Pubmed]
Annotations and hyperlinks in this abstract are from individual authors of WikiGenes or automatically generated by the WikiGenes Data Mining Engine. The abstract is from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.About WikiGenesOpen Access LicencePrivacy PolicyTerms of Useapsburg
