Full Length Research Paper

Preliminary characterization of a death-related gene in silkworm Bombyx mori

Gang Chi¹, Lu Gao¹, Keping Chen¹*, Qin Yao¹, Zhe Yang¹, Huiqing Chen, Lin Wang²

¹Institute of Life Sciences, Jiangsu University, 301 Xuefu Road, Zhenjiang 212013, P. R. China.

²Beijing Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau, No. 6 Tianshuiyuan Street, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100026, P. R. China.

*Corresponding author. E-mail: kpchen@ujs.edu.cn. Tel: 86-511-88791923. Fax: 86-511-88791923.

Accepted 29 April, 2009

In order to study the mechanism of programmed cell death (PCD) in silkworm Bombyx mori, we employed suppressive subtractive hybridization to screen associated genes. In this study, a novel gene was isolated from B. mori, which may be involved in PCD as analyzed by bioinformatics and it was named as DRP (death-related protein) gene. RT-PCR analysis showed and prokaryotic expression. Through RT-PCR analysis of death-related protein gene in different tissues and different developmental stage of B. mori, it showed the distributed condition of the gene. It was widely expressed in various tissues and mainly expressed in testis, malphigian vessels, posterior intestine, silk gland. Meanwhile, it was widely expressed in virous developmental stages and mainly expressed in egg, indicating its possible roles in development of programmed cell death. We also tested the expression of this gene in prokaryotic system, which may be useful for subsequent studies. This gene is registered in GenBank under the accession number FJ447481.

Key words: DRP, Bombyx mori, bioinformatics, prokaryotic expression, RT-PCR.