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MBE Advance Access published online on August 16, 2007
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msm171
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© 2007 The Authors.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Research Article

Conservation of Essential Design Features in Coiled Coil Silks

Tara D. Sutherland1, Sarah Weisman1, Holly E. Trueman1, Alagacone Sriskantha1, John W. H. Trueman2 and Victoria S. Haritos1

1 CSIRO Entomology, GPO Box 1700, Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia
2 School of Botany and Zoology, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia

Corresponding author: Tara D. Sutherland, CSIRO Entomology, GPO Box 1700, Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia, Phone +61 2 6246 4236, Fascimile: +61 2 6246 4000, Email: tara.sutherland{at}csiro.au

Received for publication May 22, 2007. Revision received August 13, 2007. Accepted for publication August 14, 2007.

Silks are strong protein fibres produced by a broad array of spiders and insects. The vast majority of known silks are large, repetitive proteins assembled into extended ß-sheet structures. Honeybees, however, have found a radically different evolutionary solution to the need for a building material. The four fibrous proteins of honeybee silk are small (~30 kDa each) and non-repetitive, and adopt a coiled coil structure. We examined silks from the three superfamilies of the Aculeata (Hymenoptera: Apocrita) by infrared spectroscopy, and found coiled coil structure in bees (Apoidea) and in ants (Vespoidea) but not in parasitic wasps of the Chrysidoidea. We subsequently identified and sequenced the silk genes of bumblebees, bulldog ants and weaver ants, and compared these to honeybee silk genes. Each species produced orthologues of the four small fibroin proteins identified in honeybee silk. Each fibroin contained a continuous predicted coiled coil region of around 210-residues, flanked by 23 -160 residue length N- and C- termini. The cores of the coiled coils were unusually rich in alanine. There was extensive sequence divergence among the bee and ant silk genes (<50% similarity between the alignable regions of bee and ant sequences), consistent with constant and equivalent divergence since the bee/ant split (estimated to be 155 million years). Despite a high background level of sequence diversity we have identified conserved design elements that we propose are essential to the assembly and function of coiled coil silks.

Key Words: silk • coiled coils • bees • ants • social insects


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