Subject: Helping FlyBase: ADRC-10845
Dear Thomas,
We are currently curating the abstracts for the upcoming 43rd
(San Diego) Annual Drosophila Research Conference, for FlyBase.
I am writing in connection with your abstract:
'Neuroserpin may Regulate Proteolytic Processing of Neuropeptides.'
You mention a gene that is new to FlyBase, neuroserpin. Do you know
which of the Genome Project CG annotations your gene corresponds to?
All the CGs have corresponding gene records in FlyBase already and we
don't like to make duplicate records for what is actually the same gene
unless we can't avoid it. If your gene does not correspond to a CG
then perhaps you could tell me its map location, as this is valuable
information for the genome annotation project.
Also, if neuroserpin has picked up a short symbol since you submitted
the abstract then this would be a good time to tell me so I can get it
into the database.
Thank you very much for your help,
with best wishes,
Rachel.
\----------------------------------------------------------------------
Rachel Drysdale, Ph.D.
FlyBase (Cambridge),
\----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: Helping FlyBase: ADRC-10845
Hi Rachel,
sorry to be late with this reply. The Drosophila Neuroserpin like cDNA
corresponds to sp4, CG9453, a serine proteinase inhibitor first described
by Han et al (2000). One of the splice variants of this Serpin shows
considerable homology to the vertebrate Neurosepin proteins (Human, mouse,
rat, chicken). In the work I intend to present at the fly meeting, I used
both, the Drosophila sp4 cDNA and a vertebrate (chicken) neuroserpin cDNA
under the control of the GAL4 UAS to investigate mis/overexpression
phenotypes. Since I found very similar phenotypes for overexpression of
chicken Neuroserpin and Drosophila sp4, and because of the sequence
similarity, I refer to the proteins in the title of my abstract as
'Neuroserpin'. Other features of vertebrate neuroserpin (like the
neuron-specific expression) may be less conserved in flies, and I haven't
found a bona-fide mutant yet (with a phenotype that would justify to name
the gene), so I am reluctant to (re)name the gene and would probably stick
with sp4 for right now.
I hope this helped a little.
Best,
Thomas