Multiple loci for synapse protein SNAP-25 in the tetraploid goldfish

The common goldfish Carassius auratus is tetraploid and has 100 chromosomes. We describe here goldfish cDNA clones for SNAP-25, a 200-amino-acid synaptosome-associated protein that has remained highly conserved during evolution. SNAP-25 occurs as a single-copy gene in mouse, chicken, and Drosophila melanogaster. Sequences of six distinct goldfish cDNA clones and Southern hybridizations show that the goldfish has three, or possibly four, SNAP-25 loci rather than two as expected. A gene duplication early in actinopterygian fish evolution gave rise to the loci SnapA and SnapB. The proteins SNAP-A and SNAP-B are 94% and 91% identical to the mouse protein but are only 91% identical to each other. SNAP-B has a larger number of unique amino acid replacements than SNAP-A and also has more dramatic replacements. The tetraploidization resulted in two SnapB loci whose divergence from each other is consistent with a tetraploidization event 15-20 million years ago. The presence of duplicate SnapA loci has not yet been possible to confirm, possibly because they are still very similar to each other. Two of the SnapA cDNA clones and one SnapB cDNA clone have frameshift mutations. As these aberrant alleles otherwise display high sequence identity to the functional alleles, they probably became nonfunctional recently. The findings of allelic variability and aberrant alleles emphasize the importance of characterizing multiple DNA clones in tetraploid species.