a potential role for drosophila mucins in development and physiology果蝇黏蛋白的潜在作用发展和生理学.pdfVIP

A Potential Role for Drosophila Mucins in Development and Physiology 1 ¨ 1 2 ¨ 1 Zulfeqhar A. Syed , Torleif Hard , Anne Uv , Iris F. van Dijk-Hard * ¨ ¨ 1 Department of Medical Chemistry and Cell Biology, Institute of Biomedicine, Goteborg University, Goteborg, Sweden, 2 Department of Medical Genetics, Institute of ¨ ¨ Biomedicine, Goteborg University, Goteborg, Sweden Abstract Vital vertebrate organs are protected from the external environment by a barrier that to a large extent consists of mucins. These proteins are characterized by poorly conserved repeated sequences that are rich in prolines and potentially glycosylated threonines and serines (PTS). We have now used the characteristics of the PTS repeat domain to identify Drosophila mucins in a simple bioinformatics approach. Searching the predicted protein database for proteins with at least 4 repeats and a high ST content, more than 30 mucin-like proteins were identified, ranging from 300–23000 amino acids in length. We find that Drosophila mucins are present at all stages of the fly life cycle, and that their transcripts localize to selective organs analogous to sites of vertebrate mucin expression. The results could allow for addressing basic questions about human mucin-related diseases in this model system. Additionally, many of the mucins are expressed in selective tissues during embryogenesis, thus revealing new potential functions for mucins as apical matrix components during organ morphogenesis. ¨ ¨ Citation: Syed ZA, Hard T, Uv A, van Dijk-Hard IF (2008) A Potential Role for