Meeting Abstract

P1.155  Friday, Jan. 4  Cloning of a Putative Elongation Factor 1α Gene from the Ovaries of the Ridgeback Shrimp, Sicyonia ingentis TERUSAKI, A/T*; PUENGYAM, P; TSUKIMURA, B; California State University, Fresno; Prince of Songkla University, Songkhla, Thailand; California State University, Fresno Aterusaki@gmail.com

Elongation factors are a group of highly conserved proteins important in the translation of proteins. The elongation Factor 1α (EF1α) catalyzes the binding of the aminoacyl tRNA to the ribosome during translation. To catalyze this binding, EF1α utilizes energy provided by the hydrolysis of GTP. In this study we isolated a full length cDNA sequence of the EF1α gene from the ovaries of the ridgeback shrimp, Sicyonia ingentis. Ovaries were excised from shrimp and total RNA was extracted and cDNA was generated using the CloneMiner cDNA Library kit. Sequences generated from our cDNA were analyzed using BLAST analysis. From our search, a 1,589 bp sequence with high similarity (94%) to EF1α mRNAs from other penaeoid species was chosen for further study. Within this full length cDNA is a ORF of 864 bp encoding a polypeptide of 287 amino acids. A comparison of our sequence to EF1α of the, Ecuadorian white prawn, Litopenaeus vannamei showed homologous amino acid sequences in regions identified as GTP binding domains, 118-183, 295-321, 355-387, 403-438, 535-564. Furthermore, a 16 amino acid GTPase effector domain within our S. ingentis EF1α sequence was homologous to one identified previously in L. vannamei, 226-273. The homology of our sequence to EF1α of L. vannamei provides strong evidence that the gene we isolated encodes the protein EF1α in S. ingentis. However, further studies will need to be performed to verify the functionality of this identified gene sequence.