Isolation and characterization of two actins of the Pacific white shrimp, Litopenaeus vannamei

Two actin genes named actinT1 and actinT2 were isolated and sequenced from the Pacific white shrimp, Litopenaeus vannamei, by screening from a shrimp eyestalk cDNA library. L. vannamei actinT1 cDNA has a 1,128-bp open reading frame encoding for 376 amino acids while L. vannamei actinT2 cDNA has a 1,131-bp open reading frame coding for 377 amino acids. Alignment of the actinT1 and actinT2 cDNA sequences showed that these two actin genes share a sequence identity of 86% at amino acid residues. When compared with actins of several other invertebrate and vertebrate species, the nucleotide sequence of actinT1 is highly homologous (97-100%) with beta-actins, while actinT2 shares 86-95% identity with alpha-actins on the nucleotide level. Phylogenetic analysis and BLAST searches indicated that the ActinT1 protein is identical to crustacean beta-actins, while the ActinT2 protein is highly homologous to crustacean alpha-actins. Constitutive expression of the actinT1 and actinT2 genes were detected by RT-PCR in all adult shrimp organs, including brain, eye-stalk, gill, heart, hemolymph, hepatopancreas, muscle, swimming legs, and stomach, as well as in the shrimp zygote, nauplius, and mysis life stages. These data will facilitate attempts to clone and identify more shrimp genes and constitutive shrimp promoters.