Bifunctional glyoxylate cycle protein of Caenorhabditis elegans: a developmentally regulated protein of intestine and muscle.

The reaction of an abundant 106-kDa polypeptide with a specific monoclonal antibody has been localized in intestinal and muscle cells of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. This protein was first detected in 4-6 cells of the clonal E lineage of 100-cell embryos. This lineage is committed to the intestinal cell fate. The antigen continued to be expressed in the differentiating gut and then appeared in early differentiating body wall muscle cells of 400- to 500-cell embryos. Molecular cloning and sequencing showed that the largest cDNA clone contained 3274 bp and encoded a sequence of 1005 amino acids. The predicted polypeptide of 112,799 MW contains separate domains for the glyoxylate cycle enzymes isocitrate lyase and malate synthase. Their enzymatic activities had been shown previously to be highest in embryos and L1 larvae (Khan, F. R., and McFadden, B. A. (1980). FEBS Lett. 115, 312-314; Khan, F. R., and McFadden, B. A. (1982). Exp. Parasitol. 54, 48-54; Wadsworth, W. G., and Riddle, D. L. (1989). Dev. Biol. 132, 167-173). The domain-specific sequences were shown to be contiguous in genomic DNA and are separated by an intron of 68 bp. A single polypeptide and both enzymatic activities are precipitated by the antibody, and peptide fragments resulting from limited proteolytic digestion contained amino acid sequences which overlap the predicted junctional region. The physical localization of the gene correlates with a small region of the left arm of Linkage Group V to which multiple embryonic lethal mutations have been mapped.