title: A Drosophila hsp70 gene contains long, antiparallel, coupled open reading frames (LAC ORFs) conserved in homologous loci.
abstract: A clone isolated from a Drosophila auraria heat-shock cDNA library presents two long, antiparallel, coupled (LAC) open reading frames (ORFs). One strand ORF is 1,929 nucleotides long and exhibits great identity (87.5% at the nucleotide level and 94% at the amino acid level) with the hsp70 gene copies of D. melanogaster, while the second strand ORF, in antiparallel in-frame register arrangement, is 1,839 nucleotides long and exhibits 32% identity with a putative, recently identified, NAD(+)-dependent glutamate dehydrogenase (NAD(+)-GDH). The overlap of the two ORFs is 1,824 nucleotides long. Computational analysis shows that this LAC ORF arrangement is conserved in other hsp70 loci in a wide range of organisms, raising questions about possible evolutionary benefits of such a peculiar genomic organization.
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics, Development and Molecular Biology, School of Biology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, AUTH, Greece.
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Konstantopoulou
authors.forename: C A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Ouzounis
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Drosopoulou
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yiangou
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sideras
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Sander
authors.forename: Z G
authors.initials: ZG
authors.lastname: Scouras
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D005075:Biological Evolution; D017124:Conserved Sequence; D004330:Drosophila / Q000235:genetics*; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000235:genetics; D017344:Genes, Insect; D018840:HSP70 Heat-Shock Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D005810:Multigene Family; D016366:Open Reading Frames; D010802:Phylogeny; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid
chemical_list: D018840:HSP70 Heat-Shock Proteins