Skip Navigation



MBE Advance Access published online on November 4, 2008
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msn251
This Article
Right arrow Advance Access manuscript (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow Supplementary Data
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
26/2/299    most recent
msn251v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Kashiyama, K.
Right arrow Articles by Goto, S. G.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Kashiyama, K.
Right arrow Articles by Goto, S. G.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Research Article

Molecular characterization of visual pigments in Branchiopoda and the evolution of opsins in Arthropoda

Kazuyuki Kashiyama*, Takaharu Seki{dagger}, Hideharu Numata* and Shin G. Goto*

* Graduate School of Science, Osaka City University, Osaka 558-8585, Japan
{dagger} Division of Health Science, Osaka Kyoiku University, Kashiwara 582-8582, Japan

Corresponding author: Shin G. Goto, Graduate School of Science, Osaka City University, Sumiyoshi-ku, Osaka 558-8585, Japan, Fax: +81-6-6605-2522, Tel: +81-6-6605-2573, E-mail: shingoto{at}sci.osaka-cu.ac.jp

Received for publication August 26, 2008. Revision received October 24, 2008. Accepted for publication October 26, 2008.

Studies on color vision in invertebrates have focused primarily on insect visual pigments, with little attention given to crustacean visual pigments. None of the blue-green-, blue-, or UV-sensitive opsins have been identified in crustaceans. In addition, the discussion of visual pigments has been limited to long-wavelength-sensitive opsins in Pancrustacea. Here we focused on Branchiopoda (Crustacea), which is a sister group of Hexapoda including insects. In the tadpole shrimp Triops granarius the visual pigment chromophore was retinal. Multiple opsins were isolated from each of three branchiopod species, T. granarius, T. longicaudatus, and the fairy shrimp Branchinella kugenumaensis (5, 5 and 4 opsins from these species, respectively). Phylogenetic analyses and the presence of a lysine residue corresponding to position 90 in bovine rhodopsin suggested that three of the branchiopod opsins comprise UV-sensitive pigments. In addition, the phylogenetic relationships between insect and branchiopod UV-sensitive opsins revealed that the divergence of blue and UV-sensitive pigments predates the Branchiopoda and Insecta divergence. The other branchiopod opsins show distant relationships to other known insect opsins and form novel clusters. The present results strongly suggest that the ancestral arthropod of the Chelicerata-Pancrustacea lineages possessed at least 4 types of opsins. The ancestors of Pancrustacea and the Insecta-Branchiopoda lineages possessed at least 5 and 6 types of opsins, respectively. Our results suggest that in the evolutionary process associated with each lineage, several opsins appeared and diversified with repeated gene duplication, of which some have been lost in some taxa.

Key Words: Opsin • Branchiopoda • Triops • Branchinella • Visual pigments • Retinal


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.