Molecular Phylogenetics of Korean endemic land snail, Aegista chejuensis inferred from metallothionein gene sequence = Metallothionein 유전자를 활용한 제주배꼽달팽이(Aegista chejuensis)의 분자계통학적 연구

Abstract

Metallothioneins (MT) are cysteine-rich small proteins known for their high affinity binding to metal ions. MT confers cytoprotection against oxidative stress and acts as an efficient modulator of immunity and infection. There have been ever-increasing reports on the function of MT in environmental monitoring programmes. Lately, MT has been studied as a biomarker towards the taxonomic clustering of various species, including the molluscans. The Korean endemic land snail, Aegista chejuensis is native to Jeju Island and South coastal regions of Korea. Functional genomics information for the species is limited, although the Illumina-based DNAseq and transcript-xome information are registered with the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) of National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). While annotating the ORF-sensitive unigenes from the transcript-xome, a MT sequence comprising of 288 bp coding region and 96 amino acid residues translatable protein was deciphered. In silico analysis using ClustalX and the MEGA7 program grouped A. chejuensis under the Stylommatophora clade of eupulmonate mollusk families. The study was able to confirm the evolutionary position of the species and established the MT sequence as a candidate for taxonomic classification of the species.