Abstract
The movement of vesicles from the neuronal cell body to specific destinations requires molecular motors. The squid giant axon represents a powerful model for studies of the axonal transport mechanism because the axoplasm can readily be separated from the sheath by simple extrusion. In a previous study, vesicular movements in the axoplasm of the squid giant axon were inhibited by the kinesin antibody. In the present study, we cloned and sequenced the cDNAs for squid brain KIFs. Amplification of the conserved nucleotide sequences of the motor domain by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using first-strand cDNAs of the squid optic lobe identified six new KIF proteins. Motif analysis of the motor domains revealed that the squid KIFs are homologous to the consensus sequences of the mouse KIFs. The phylogenetic tree generated by using the maximum parsimony (MP) method, the neighbor-joining (NJ) method, the minimum evolution (ME) method, and the maximum likelihood (ML) method showed that squid KIFs are closest to mouse KIFs. These data prove the phylogenetic relationships between squid KIFs and mouse ones.
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