부산대학교 도서관

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ygcen.2006.03.013 Byline: San-Tai Shen (a), Yi-Sheng Cheng (b), Tzu-Yun Shen (a), John Yuh-Lin Yu (a) Keywords: Follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH); cDNA Cloning; Duck; Pituitary gland; Structural model analysis Abstract: We have cloned FSH-[beta] cDNA from duck pituitary gland by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and rapid amplification of cDNA end (RACE) methods. The cloned duck FSH-[beta] cDNA contains 1909-bp nucleotides including 396-bp of open-reading frame and 1491-bp of 3'-untranslational region. The open-reading frame encodes a 131-amino acid protein with a putative 20-amino acid signal peptide and a putative 111-amino acid mature protein. The deduced amino acid sequence shows a remarkable similarity (94-98%) to those of other avian FSH-[beta] subunits; while it exhibits lower similarities with those of turtles (82-84%), mammals (63-71%), and amphibians (53-57%). The structural model analysis of duck FSH suggests that the cysteine-knot and [beta]-strands for maintaining the specific structural frame, and the "seat-belt" loop for specific binding to FSH receptor have been conserved in tetrapodian FSH-[beta]s. Author Affiliation: (a) Institute of Cellular and Organismic Biology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC (b) Bioinformatics-Biology Service Core, Institute of Molecular Biology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC Article History: Received 13 October 2005; Revised 16 March 2006; Accepted 23 March 2006