Journal article
The mammary gland-specific marsupial ELP and eutherian CTI share a common ancestral gene
EA Pharo, AA De Leo, MB Renfree, PC Thomson, CM Lefèvre, KR Nicholas
BMC Evolutionary Biology | BMC | Published : 2012
Abstract
Background: The marsupial early lactation protein (ELP) gene is expressed in the mammary gland and the protein is secreted into milk during early lactation (Phase 2A). Mature ELP shares approximately 55.4% similarity with the colostrum-specific bovine colostrum trypsin inhibitor (CTI) protein. Although ELP and CTI both have a single bovine pancreatic trypsin inhibitor (BPTI)-Kunitz domain and are secreted only during the early lactation phases, their evolutionary history is yet to be investigated. Results: Tammar ELP was isolated from a genomic library and the fat-tailed dunnart and Southern koala ELP genes cloned from genomic DNA. The tammar ELP gene was expressed only in the mammary gland ..
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Funding Acknowledgements
We thank Dr Kaylene Simpson, Michael Wilson, Jenni Carfi and Dr Jane Whitley for their work in the cloning of the tammar ELP gene, Prof Geoff Shaw for his assistance in tammar tissue dissections and Scott Brownlees, Kerry Martin and Jenni Carfi for assistance with animal handling. We also thank Dr Matthew Digby and Sonia Mailer for their work on the microarray experiments. We thank Prof Geoff Shaw and Keng Yih Chew for the provision of tammar photos and Dr Andrew Pask for helpful comments on this manuscript. This research was funded by the Cooperative Research Centre for Innovative Dairy Products (CRC-IDP) and the Department of Zoology, The University of Melbourne. EAP was supported by an Australian Postgraduate Award, AAD by a Melbourne Research Scholarship and both EAP and AAD were recipients of a scholarship top-up from the CRC-IDP.