Molecular Cloning and Sequence Analysis of Prion Protein Gene of Dezhou Donkey in China

摘要

Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE) or prion disease has been reported in many herbivores but not in equus and the species barrier might be playing a role in resistance of these species to the disease. Therefore, analysis of genotype of prion protein (PrP) in these species may help understand the transmission of the disease. Dezhou donkey is a species of equus reared widely in China for service, food and medicine but its PrP gene has not been studied. Based on the reported PrP sequence in GenBank we designed primers and amplified, cloned and sequenced the PrP gene of Dezhou donkey. The sequence analysis showed that the Dezhou donkey PrP gene was consisted of an open reading frame of 767 nucleotides encoding 256 amino acid s. Sequence comparison showed that the PrP gene of Dezhou donkey and horse shared 91.53% homology in nucleic acids and 94.03% homology in amino acid s. Amino acid residues unique to donkey as compared with horse, mink, bovine, goat, human, elk and hamster were identified. The results provided the PrP gene data for an additional equus species, which should be useful to the study of the species barrier of TSE.