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Duplicated gelsolin family genes in zebrafish: a novel scinderin-like gene (scinla) encodes the major corneal crystallin

Sujuan Jia^*, Marina Omelchenko, Donita Garland, Vasilis Vasiliou, Jyotshnabala Kanungo^*, Michael Spencer^*, Yuri Wolf, Eugene Koonin and Joram Piatigorsky^*,1

^* Laboratory of Molecular and Developmental Biology,

Laboratory of Retinal Cellular and Molecular Biology, National Eye Institute,

National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA; and

University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, School of Pharmacy, University of Colorado, Denver, Colorado, USA

¹Correspondence: Laboratory of Molecular and Development Biology, National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health, 7 Memorial Dr., Bldg. 7, Rm. 100, Bethesda, MD, 20892, USA. E-mail: joramp{at}nei.nih.gov

We have previously identified a gelsolin-like protein (C/L-gelsolin) as a corneal crystallin in zebrafish. Here we show by phylogenetic analysis that there are at least six genes encoding gelsolin-like proteins based on their gelsolin domains in zebrafish: gsna and gsnb group with the vertebrate gelsolin gene, scina and scinb group with the scinderin (adseverin) gene, and scinla (C/L-gelsolin) and scinlb are novel scinderin-like genes. RT-PCR showed that scinla, scinlb, and gsnb are preferentially expressed in the adult cornea whereas gsna is expressed to a similar extent in cornea, lens, brain, and heart; scina and scinb expression were detectable only in whole zebrafish and not in these adult tissues. Quantitative RT-PCR and 2-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis followed by MALDI/TOF mass spectroscopy confirmed high expression of ß-actin and scinla, moderate expression of scinlb, and very low expression of gsna and gsnb in the cornea. Finally, transgenic zebrafish carrying a green fluorescent protein reporter transgene driven by a 4 kb scinla promoter fragment showed expression in the cornea, snout, dorsal fin, and tail fin of 3-day-old zebrafish larvae. Our data suggest that scinla and scinlb are diverged paralogs of the vertebrate scinderin gene and show that scinla encodes the zebrafish corneal crystallin previously called C/L-gelsolin.—Jia, S., Omelchenko, M., Garland, D., Vasiliou, V., Kanungo, J., Spencer, M., Wolf, Y., Koonin, E., Piatigorsky, J. Duplicated gelsolin family genes in zebrafish: a novel scinderin-like gene (scinla) encodes the major corneal crystallin.

Key Words: gene duplication • evolution • tissue-specific expression