In silico searches for putative growth hormone family homologs in invertebrates

Growth hormone, prolactin and somatolactin-family sequences were sought in diverse invertebrate genome and reference sequence databases using different available strategies. None of these search strategies could identify any putative invertebrate GH/PRL/SL homologs with the characteristic amino acid motif of the family, or indeed any significant sequence similarity. One sequence with high sequence identity to human PRL was identified from a tapeworm species; however this sequence is likely the result of horizontal gene transfer or contamination.

File information:

In silico searches for putative growth hormone family homologs in invertebrates.pdf
Description of methods and results, with references.

130723_Taenia_prl-hit_NJtree.phb
Neighbor joining tree file in Newick format including the identified tapeworm sequence. Vertebrate species names are abbreviated to the first letter of the genus followed by the first two letters of the species (Hsa = Homo sapiens et. c.). The tapeworm sequence is identified with the UniProt ID Q8T110_9CEST.

130723_Taenia_prl-hit_NJtree.pdf
Image of the neighbor joining tree (PDF). The tapeworm sequence is colored green.

Pairwise_align_hPRL+Taenia_prl-hit.txt
Text file with the results of the pairwise alignment between the human PRL sequence and the identified tapeworm sequence.

HsaPRL+Taenia_prl-hit.aln
Clustal alignment file containing the human PRL sequence and the identified tapeworm sequence.