Mutations of the silkworm molybdenum cofactor sulfurase gene, og, cause translucent larval skin.
Normal silkworms (Bombyx mori) have opaque larval skin due to uric acid accumulation in the epidermis while a mutant, og, is translucent owing to a deficiency in xanthine dehydrogenase (XDH), which synthesizes uric acid. Molybdenum cofactor (MoCo) sulfurase is responsible for XDH activation in various organisms. A silkworm MoCo sulfurase gene was cloned and found to be on the og locus, whose mutant alleles, og(k) and og(t), show premature stop codons, proving that og is the MoCo sulfurase gene. It was observed that a miniature inverted-repeat transposable element (MITE), named Organdy, when inserted in an og(t) mutant allele exon, causes unstable splicing of a downstream intron leading to incomplete open reading frames.
Kômoto
N
N
Insect Genetics and Evolution Department, National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, Ibaraki, Japan. natuo@affrc.go.jp
Sezutsu
H
H
Yukuhiro
K
K
Banno
Y
Y
Fujii
H
H
D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D029681:Arabidopsis Proteins; D001483:Base Sequence; D012831:Bombyx / Q000201:enzymology* / Q000235:genetics* / Q000254:growth & development; D003001:Cloning, Molecular; D017124:Conserved Sequence; D017931:DNA Primers; D005796:Genes; D007814:Larva; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011994:Recombinant Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction / Q000379:methods; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; D012879:Skin Physiological Phenomena; D013466:Sulfurtransferases / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D014968:Xanthine Dehydrogenase / Q000235:genetics
D029681:Arabidopsis Proteins; D017931:DNA Primers; D011994:Recombinant Proteins; D014968:Xanthine Dehydrogenase; C440026:ABA3 protein, Arabidopsis; D013466:Sulfurtransferases