Abstract Preview Page

This is an automatically generated preview of the abstract you selected.

Phylogeny of dorsal and ventral Luciferases in the beetle genus Pyrophorus. Uwe Stolz*; Jeffrey L. Feder 107 Galvin Life Sciences, Dept. of Biological Sciences, Univ. of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, 46556, USA      *(stolz.4@nd.edu) Bioluminescent click beetles have two sets of light organs, a dorsal pair and a single ventral organ. Members of the genus Pyrophorus (Coleoptera: Elateridae) emit different colors from dorsal and ventral light organs. Dorsal organs are greenish (546-558nm) and ventral organs are typically yellowish (575-594nm). Dorsal and ventral luciferase genes from several species in the genus Pyrophorus have been cloned and sequenced. One species, Pyrophorus plagiophthalamus, is unique in being polymorphic for light color for both organs. For all other species studied, the dorsal (ventral) Luciferases are more closely related to each other than to any ventral (dorsal) luciferases. However, the Jamaican click beetles are unique in that their dorsal and ventral Luciferases are more closely related to each other than to Luciferases (dorsal or ventral) from other species. This suggests that some form of non-homologous recombination (e.g., gene conversion) has homogenized the dorsal and ventral Luciferases in P. plagiopthalamus. Further, the Jamaican beetles' Luciferases are more similar to the dorsal Luciferases of other Pyrophorus suggesting that the direction of DNA conversion was from dorsal genes to ventral genes. [Talk: stolz.uwe.80231]

Return to the list of abstracts

E-mail   |  Conference Info  |   Index of Abstracts