Molecular cloning and biochemical characterization of sialidases from zebrafish (Danio rerio).

ABSTRACT: Sialidases remove sialic acid residues from various sialo-derivatives. To gain further insights into the biological roles of sialidases in vertebrates, we exploited zebrafish (Danio rerio) as an animal model. A zebrafish transcriptome- and genome-wide search using the sequences of the human NEU polypeptides as templates revealed the presence of seven different genes related to human sialidases. neu1 and neu4 are the putative orthologues of the mammalian sialidases NEU1 and NEU4 respectively. Interestingly, the remaining genes are organized in clusters located on chromosome 21 and are all more closely related to mammalian sialidase NEU3. They were thus named neu3.1, neu3.2, neu3.3, neu3.4 and neu3.5. Using RT-PCR (reverse transcription-PCR) we detected transcripts for all genes, apart from

SUBMITTER: Manzoni M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2267369 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature