Isolation of freshwater and deep-sea type opsin genes from the common Japanese conger |
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| Authors: | H Zhang § K Futami ‡ Y Yamada † N Horie † A Okamura † T Utoh † N Mikawa † S Tanaka † N Okamoto ‡ H P Oka † |
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| Institution: | Department of Marine Sciences, University of Connecticut, Groton, CT 06340, U.S.A.;IRAGO Institute, Shinden 377-Ehima, Atsumi-cho, Atsumi-gun, Aichi 441-3605, Japan;Department of Aquatic Biosciences, Tokyo University of Fisheries, 4-5-7 Konan Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8477, Japan |
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| Abstract: | Two rod-like opsin genes, conf and cond , were isolated from the common Japanese conger Conger myriaster . The predicted proteins of conf and cond consisted of 354 and 350 amino acid (aa) residues respectively, and the aa identity was 87.4%. Phylogenetic analysis suggested that conf and cond are homologous to the freshwater type and the deep-sea type rod opsin genes of freshwater eels. RT-PCR analyses revealed that in both juveniles and adults cond is expressed in the retina and pineal complex, while conf is only expressed in the pineal complex at a low level. |
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| Keywords: | common Japanese conger freshwater type opsin deep-sea type opsin |
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