Elsevier

Peptides

Volume 18, Issue 7, 1997, Pages 937-942
Peptides

Article
Identification of Three Allatostatins and Their cDNA From the Mosquito Aedes aegypti

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0196-9781(97)00032-6Get rights and content

Abstract

VEENSTRA, J. A., F. G. NORIEGA, R. GRAF AND R. FEYEREISEN.

Identification of three allatostatins and their cDNA from the mosquito Aedes aegypti.

PEPTIDES 18(7), 937–942, 1997.—Three allatostatins have been isolated from the mosquito Aedes aegypti. These peptides have the following structures: Ser-Pro-Lys-Tyr-Asn-Phe-Gly-Leu-amide, Leu-Pro-His-Tyr-Asn-Phe-Gly-Leu-amide, and Arg-Val-Tyr-Asp-Phe-Gly-Leu-amide. A cDNA encoding these peptides was isolated from an abdominal ganglia cDNA library and sequenced. It was found to encode two additional allatostatins: Ala-Ser-Ala-Tyr-Arg-Tyr-His-Phe-Gly-Leu-amide and Leu-Pro-Asn-Arg-Tyr-Asn-Phe-Gly-Leu-amide. Northern analysis of whole mosquito mRNA revealed a single prepro-allatostatin message of around 3,000 bases. Identification of a partial prepro-allatostatin cDNA from a midgut cDNA library shows that the same gene is also expressed in the mosquito midgut.

Section snippets

Peptide Isolation

Peptides were isolated from the same material used to isolate the Aedes leucokinins [33], and the initial solid phase extraction has been described in detail elsewhere [33]. In brief, headless mosquitoes of the UGAL strain were extracted in Bennett’s mixture, and prep C-18 bulk material (55–105 μm, 125 Å) from Millipore Corporation (Bedford, MA, USA) was used to prepurify the peptides. The high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) steps were the same as for the Aedes leucokinins, with the

Results

Mosquitoes were extracted in acid medium, and a peptide-enriched fraction was obtained by solid phase extraction as previously described for the Aedes leucokinins [33]. A number of allatostatin-immunoreactive peaks were detected in the fractions of the first HPLC column. Three of these peaks were purified to homogeneity using a combination of HPLC columns described previously [33]. In all three isolations the final HPLC columns showed a single UV-absorbing peak that was allatostatin

Discussion

The three peptides isolated and identified here are clearly related to the allatostatins originally isolated from the cockroach Diploptera punctata24, 25, 39, 40. The identified cDNA suggests that these three peptides are produced from a single precursor, which appears to encode two other allatostatins (i.e., Ala-Ser-Ala-Tyr-Arg-Tyr-His-Phe-Gly-Leu-amide and Leu-Pro-Asn-Arg-Tyr-Asn-Phe-Gly-Leu-amide). Although none of these peptides is completely identical with any of those previously

Acknowledgements

We thank Mark R. Brown for mosquitoes, Wallace Clark for peptide sequence analysis, Tom D. McClure for mass spectrometry, and Skip Vaught for DNA sequencing. This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (AI 33429 and DK 34549).

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