Cloning, expression and genomic organization of genes encoding major royal jelly protein 1 and 2 of the honey bee (Apis cerana)

Major Royal Jelly Protein cDNAs of Apis cerana (AcMRJP) were cloned and characterized. The open reading frames (ORFs) of the AcMRJP1 and AcMRJP2 genes were 1302 and 1392 nucleotides, encoding 433 and 463 amino acid residues, respectively. The sequence divergences between AcMRJP1 and AcMRJP2 and their corresponding protein families in A. mellifera were 0.0618 and 0.0934 at the nucleotide level and 0.0912 and 0.1438 at the protein level, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis supports the orthologous similarity between these proteins. The deduced amino acids indicated high essential amino acid contents of AcMRJP1 and AcMRJP2 (47.5 and 44.8 %, respectively). The genomic organization of both AcMRJP1 and AcMRJP2 was determined. Both the AcMRJP1 (3663 bp) and AcMRJP2 (3963 bp) genes contained six exons and five introns, where all boundaries conformed to the GT/AG rule. AcMRJP1 and AcMRJP2 cDNAs were cloned into pET17b, and both the recombinant (r) AcMRJP1 (47.9 kDa) and rAcMRJP2 (51.7 kDa) were expressed in the insoluble form. Western blot analysis and N-terminal sequencing of the solubilized proteins revealed successful expression of rAcMRJP1 and rAcMRJP2 in vitro. The yields of the purified rAcMRJP1 and rAcMRJP2 were approximately 20 and 8 mg protein per liter of the flask culture, respectively.