Molecular Characterization of Two Drosophila Guanylate Cyclases Expressed in the Nervous System (*)
- From the (1) Department of Biological Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907 and the
- (2)Department of Genetic Engineering, Kyung Hee University, Yongin-Gun, Kyungki-Do, South Korea
- § To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel.: 317-494-8202; Fax: 317-494-0876.
Abstract
We have isolated, by interspecies hybridization, two classes of Drosophila cDNA each encoding a different guanylate cyclase (GC). One of them encodes an α subunit homolog of soluble GC, designated DGCα1, and the other encodes a receptor-type GC, designated DrGC. The dgcα1 cDNA encodes a protein of 676 amino acids and maps to 99B. In situ hybridization to adult tissue sections showed that dgcα1 mRNA is found mainly in the cell bodies of the optic lobe, central brain, and thoracic ganglia. The DGCα1 protein was also localized primarily to the nervous system by immunocytochemical staining, consistent with results of in situ hybridization. However, no detectable expression of this protein was found in the retina. The other class of cDNA, drgc, maps to 76C and encodes a 1525-amino acid protein displaying structural features similar to other known receptor-type guanylate cyclases. However, it has a C-terminal 430 amino acid region that has no homology to any known proteins. drgc RNA is expressed at low levels throughout development and in adult heads and bodies. In situ hybridizations to adult tissue sections showed that drgc mRNA is expressed in a wide range of tissues, including the optic lobe, central brain, thoracic ganglia, digestive tract, and the oocyte.
Footnotes
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↵* This work was supported by National Eye Institute Grant EY00033. The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore by hereby marked “advertisement” in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.
The nucleotide sequence(s) reported in this paper has been submitted to the GenBank
/EMBL Data Bank with accession number(s) U23485.
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↵1 The abbreviations used are:
- GC
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guanylate cyclase
- kb
-
kilobase pair(s)
- PBS
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phosphate-buffered saline: MOPS, 4-morpholineethanesulfonic acid
- GST
-
glutathione S-transferase.
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↵2 S. Shah and D. R. Hyde (University of Notre Dame) have independently isolated and analyzed the same class of GC cDNA clones, manuscript submitted for publication.
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↵3 McNeil et al. (1995) (Oregon Health Sciences University) have also independently isolated and analyzed the same class of GC cDNA clones.
- © 1995 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.
