The compact genome of Fugu rubripes has been sequenced to over 95% coverage, and more than 80% of the assembly is in multigene-sized scaffolds. In this 365-megabase vertebrate genome, repetitive DNA accounts for less than one-sixth of the sequence, and gene loci occupy about one-third of the genome. As with the human genome, gene loci are not evenly distributed, but are clustered into sparse and dense regions. Some "giant" genes were observed that had average coding sequence sizes but were spread over genomic lengths significantly larger than those of their human orthologs. Although three-quarters of predicted human proteins have a strong match to Fugu, approximately a quarter of the human proteins had highly diverged from or had no pufferfish homologs, highlighting the extent of protein evolution in the 450 million years since teleosts and mammals diverged. Conserved linkages between Fugu and human genes indicate the preservation of chromosomal segments from the common vertebrate ancestor, but with considerable scrambling of gene order.
Title: Staphylococcus haemolyticus lipase: biochemical properties, substrate specificity and gene cloning Oh B, Kim H, Lee J, Kang S, Oh T Ref: FEMS Microbiology Letters, 179:385, 1999 : PubMed
Lipase of Staphylococcus haemolyticus L62 was purified from culture supernatant and its molecular mass was estimated to be 45 kDa by SDS-PAGE. Its optimum temperature and pH for the hydrolysis of olive oil was 28 degrees C and pH 8.5, respectively. The enzyme was stable up to 50 degrees C in the presence of Ca(2+)and over the pH range 5-11. It had high hydrolytic activity against tributyrin, tripropionin, and trimyristin among various triglycerides. The gene encoding the lipase was cloned in Escherichia coli. Sequence analysis showed an open reading frame of 2136 bp, which encodes a preproenzyme of 711 amino acids. The preproenzyme is composed of a signal peptide (60 aa), a pro-peptide (259 aa), and a mature enzyme (392 aa). The mature enzyme has 49-67% amino acid sequence homology with other staphylococcal lipases.
