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Updated: Jul 13, 2026

An Integrated Approach for Microprotein Identification and Sequence Analysis
Published on: July 12, 2022
Molecular cloning and phylogenetic analysis on alpha2-macroglobulin (alpha2-M) of white shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei
Yong-Chin Lin1, Baskaralingam Vaseeharan, Jiann-Chu Chen
1Department of Aquaculture, College of Life Sciences, National Taiwan Ocean University, Keelung, Taiwan 202, ROC.
Abstract:
The full-length sequence of alpha2-macroglobulin (alpha2-M) was cloned from the hemocytes of white shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), cloning and sequencing of overlapping PCR, and the rapid amplification of cDNA ends method. The alpha2-M cDNA consists of 4682bp with an open reading frame of 4479bp, a 52-bp 5'-untranslated region, and a 132-bp 3'-untranslated region. The predicted molecular mass of the mature protein (1475 amino acids) is 167.1kDa, with an estimated pI of 5.70. The L. vannamei alpha2-M sequence contains putative functional domains including a bait region, a GCGEQNM (985-991) thiol ester domain, and a receptor-binding domain. Sequence comparison and phylogenetic analyses show that alpha2-M deduced amino acid sequence of L. vannamei has a high level of similarity to that of tiger shrimp Penaeus monodon and kuruma shrimp Marsupenaeus japonicus. The alpha2-M transcript was mainly expressed in hemocytes, and was significantly higher in premoult stage than in intermoult and postmoult stages.
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