Structural conservation of the salivary gland-specific slalom gene in the blowfly Lucilia sericata

Abstract

"Structural conservation of the salivary gland-specific slalom gene in the blowfly Lucilia sericata."Dev Genes Evol. 2005 Oct;215(10):537-44Publisher: Springer Verlag.Use of alternative location to go to the published version of the article requires journal subscription. Glycosylation and sulfation are two of the essential post-translational modifications of proteins. The slalom gene encodes a PAPS transporter, a conserved protein found in organisms as diverse as plants and humans and required for sulfation of proteins. In Drosophila, slalom is exclusively expressed in salivary glands, which is unexpected, taken into account the general function for sulfation of proteins. In this paper, we present a detailed description of the slalom gene in a large insect, the blowfly Lucilia sericata. Our data demonstrates that the slalom gene structure, the protein and the expression pattern are highly conserved between Lucilia and Drosophila. Lucilia slalom promoter analysis, using transgenic Drosophila, demonstrates that the Lucilia slalom promoter can faithfully mimic the expression pattern of both Lucilia and Drosophila slalom in salivary glands. Taken together, this data shows the structure and the transcriptional cis-regulatory elements of the slalom gene to be unchanged during evolution, despite the 100 Mio. years of divergence between the two insects. Moreover, it suggests that the salivary gland-specific expression of slalom bears an important and conserved function for sulfation of specific macromolecules.

Ade novotranscriptome assembly ofLucilia sericata(Diptera: Calliphoridae) with predicted alternative splices, single nucleotide polymorphisms and transcript expression estimates

“…Embryonic patterning genes from L. sericata are of particular interest as they have been compared to their counterparts in D. melanogaster and other species to investigate their evolution in higher flies (McGregor et al ., 2001; Ali et al ., 2005; Mellenthin et al ., 2006). The results in Fig.…”

“…Likewise, population studies of L. sericata development (Gallagher et al ., 2010; Tarone et al ., 2011) and diapause (Tachibana et al ., 2005) have contributed to the understanding of ecological adaptations. In evolution research, genes from L. sericata have often been compared to Drosophila melanogaster to answer evolutionary questions that extend beyond the Drosophila lineage (McGregor et al ., 2001; Ali et al ., 2005; Mellenthin et al ., 2006). There are also indications that L. sericata can hybridize with Lucilia cuprina and that there may be a number of cryptic species in the genus (Stevens et al ., 2002; Tourle et al ., 2009), making Lucilia a potentially useful group for studying hybridization and speciation.…”

Two Golgi-resident 3′-Phosphoadenosine 5′-Phosphosulfate Transporters Play Distinct Roles in Heparan Sulfate Modifications and Embryonic and Larval Development in Caenorhabditis elegans

“…Recently, two human PAPS transporter genes were cloned and named PAPST1 (Slc35b2) (25) and PAPST2 (Slc35b3) (26,27). The Drosophila slalom gene, which encodes PAPST1, was identified as a segment polarity gene (28,29). In zebrafish, mutations in pinscher, the gene encoding PAPST1, caused defects in skeletal development and axon sorting (30).…”

Aging Blow Fly Eggs Using Gene Expression: A Feasibility Study

“…Developmental biology research has uncovered numerous instances of gene expression changes throughout maturation [see Kalthoff (6), and references therein]. Flies have been particularly well studied in this regard (7–13), including the Calliphoridae. Predictable changes in gene expression during development led to the hypothesis tested here, that differential gene expression could be used to make more precise PMI predictions, by effectively breaking a developmental stage into smaller developmental units.…”