Comparison of Bombyx mori and Helicoverpa armigera cytoplasmic actin genes provides clues to the evolution of actin genes in insects

The cytoplasmic actin genes BmA3 and BmA4 of Bombyx mori were found clustered in a single genomic clone in the same orientation. As a similar clustering of the two cytoplasmic actin genes Ha3a and Ha3b also occurs in another lepidopteran, Helicoverpa armigera, we analyzed the sequence of the pair of genes from each species. Due to the high conservation of cytoplasmic actins, the coding sequence of the four genes was easily aligned, allowing the detection of similarities in noncoding exon and intron sequences as well as in flanking sequences. All four genes exhibited a conserved intron inserted in codon 117, an original position not encountered in other species. It can thus be postulated that all of these genes derived from a common ancestral gene carrying this intron after a single event of insertion. The comparison of the four genes revealed that the genes of B. mori and H. armigera are related in two different ways: the coding sequence and the intron that interrupts it are more similar between paralogous genes within each species than between orthologous genes of the two species. In contrast, the other (noncoding) regions exhibited the greatest similarity between a gene of one species and a gene of the other species, defining two pairs of orthologous genes, BmA3 and HaA3a on one hand and BmA4 and HaA3b on the other. However, in each species, the very high similarities of the coding sequence and of the single intron that interrupts it strongly suggest that gene conversion events have homogenized this part of the sequence. As the divergence of the B. mori genes was higher than that of the H. armigera genes, we postulated that the gene conversion occurred earlier in the B. mori lineage. This leads us to hypothesize that gene conversion could also be responsible for the original transfer of the common intron to the second gene copy before the divergence of the B. mori and H. armigera lineages.