DNA sequence analysis of an abl-related gene in the blow fly, Calliphora erythrocephala

The Ceabl locus is a member of a small family of abl-related sequences in C. erythrocephala. The catalytic, SH2 and SH3 domains of the Ceabl-encoded protein show greater than 75% sequence identity to vertebrate abl protein tyrosine kinases and greater than 95% identity to the D. melanogaster abl polypeptide. Ceabl diverges from the vertebrate proteins, however, at the extreme amino terminus, near the beginning of the vertebrate abl exon involved in differential splicing. The carboxyl region shows no detectable similarity to the vertebrate abl proteins, while identity to Drosophila abl falls to 55%. Regions conserved between the two dipteran genes revealed no strong similarities to other proteins in the Genbank and EMBL databases.