Vargula tsujii

Project History

We conducted 454 sequencing on bodies minus eyes. The specimens were collected from Catalina Island, with specific data available on the phylogeny website.

I've made a galaxy history to assemble the transcriptome and look for luciferase genes [1]

There are 8 isotigs retrieved with an E-value of 0.001, when blasting the transcriptome with Vargula hilgendorfii luciferase. When blasted back to GenBank, all 8 of these have strong similarity to known ostracod luciferases.

These luciferase genes are also similar to kielin/crossveinless, which is involved in development.

There is also similarity to vitellogenein, through the VWD similarity.

Project Notes and Ideas

An interesting result is that a truncated luciferase from Vargula hilgendorfii produces bioluminescence, suggesting that one VWD domain is sufficient to catalyze the light reaction.

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Maeda1996_JBiochem.pdf