Molecular cloning of adenylate kinase from the human filarial parasite Onchocerca volvulus

Document Type : Full paper (Original article)

Authors

1 Department of Basic Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran

2 Tropical Medicine Section, Bernhard-Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, Hamburg, Germany

Abstract

Adenylate kinases (ADK) are ubiquitous enzymes that contribute to the homeostasis of adenine
nucleotides in living cells. In this study, the cloning of a cDNA encoding an adenylate kinase from the filaria
Onchocerca volvulus has been described. Using PCR technique, a 281 bp cDNA fragment encoding part of
an adenylate kinase was isolated from an O. volvulus cDNA library. Use of this fragment as a probe allowed
the isolation of a larger cDNA clone through the searching the GenBank expressed sequence tag database.
The full-length cDNA encodes 236 amino acid residues with a predicted molecular mass of 26.177 kDa. The
deduced amino acid sequence exhibited 80% identity to the homologous adenylate kinase identified from
Caenorhabditis elegans. Domain analysis of the resulting protein sequence was found to contain “adenylate
kinase signature” motif which is highly conserved in all known ADKs. Multiple alignments showed that the
N-terminal is well conserved, whereas the C-terminal is the most variable region.

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