코끼리조개 (Panopea japonica) 의 Metallothionein 유전자를 활용한 분자계통학적 연구

Abstract

Metallothionein (MT) plays an important role in protecting cells from harmful substances. MT is a protein with less than seven kDa with large amounts of cysteine residues, which have been studied as a phylogenetic biomarker with unique patterns not only in vertebrates but also in Mollusca. Panopea japonica is a giant clam that lives on the coast of the East Sea in Korea. Nevertheless, little research has been done on the genetic resources of P. japonica, and the amount of genetic information registered in the NCBI is very limited. In this study, a metallothionein sequence consisting of 74 amino acids with 222 bp nucleotide was obtained from the transcriptome data by using the GS FLX 454 platform. In Silico analysis of PjMT gene was conducted with ClustalX and MEGAX programs. With the previously reported Mollusca MT data, we verified the PjMT sequence as a potential candidate for molecular marker, and also confirmed that PjMT was clustered in Myoida order.