Premium
STUDIES ON A CADMIUM‐INDUCED METALLOTHIONEIN IN HOUSEFLY LARVAE, MUSCA DOMESTICA
Author(s) -
Changying NIU,
Chaoliang LEI,
Cui HU
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
insect science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.991
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1744-7917
pISSN - 1672-9609
DOI - 10.1111/j.1744-7917.2000.tb00234.x
Subject(s) - housefly , musca , metallothionein , cadmium , biology , amino acid , tyrosine , phenylalanine , size exclusion chromatography , cysteine , biochemistry , larva , aromatic amino acids , chemistry , botany , enzyme , organic chemistry , gene
The induction of metallothionein (MT) was studied in the housefly larvae ( Musca domestica ). Upon dietary exposure to Cd, two Cd‐binding proteins were isolated from the whole body homogenates, using gel filtration and ion exchange chromatography. Mass spectrometric measurement revealed that they have high purity and the molecular weight are 9045.9Da and 11560.2Da, respectively. Amino acid analysis showed that the content of cysteine is the highest, attaining to 18.2%. However, aromatic amino acid residues such as tyrosine (2.5%) and phenylalanine (3.1%) were also detected. In addition, MT from housefly larvae has strong heat stability. All these results suggest that the properties of MT isolated from housefly are very similar to that of mammalian MT, but some differences still exist.