Worm Breeder's Gazette 11(2): 38
These abstracts should not be cited in bibliographies. Material contained herein should be treated as personal communication and should be cited as such only with the consent of the author.
Using the technique of cross-species hybridization to C. briggsae we have initiated a search for coding elements contained within seven cosmids located near dpy-14. Fragments detecting conserved regions between C. elegans and C. briggsae were used to probe Northern blots and screen cDNA libraries. A total of ten conserved fragments detected seven cDNAs. To better align the genetic and physical maps of this region the conserved fragments, cDNA clones, the breakpoint of the deficiency hDf8, and the probes identifying sP1 and hP9 have been positioned on a restriction map of the region. Two cDNA clones, sP1-1 and sP1-3, also detected conserved bands between C. elegans and mammals. Partial cDNA clones of both were sequenced and the sequence data used to screen the EMBL sequence data base. The sP1-1 sequence did not detect any significant matches however, the sP1-3 sequence detected sequence similarities with the gene for S-adenosyl-L-homocysteine hydrolase (AHH) from rat(1) and D. discoideum(2). A comparison of the deduced amino acid sequence indicated that 60% of the amino acids between sP1-3 and AHH are identical; and, if conservative changes are considered the homology between sP1-3 and AHH is greater than 80%. Thus the high degree of similarity between sP1-3 and AHH suggests that the sP1-3 locus encodes the gene S-adenosyl-L-homocysteine hydrolase.