Cloning of a Heat Shock Protein 60 Gene from an Arctic Copepod Calauns glacialis

Abstract

Copepods of the genus Calanus form a predominant proportion of the zooplankton biomass in the North Atlantic. They play an important role in marine food webs, both as consumers of primary production and as prey species for the larvae of commercial fish. We collected a Copepod species from seawater around the Korea Arctic Research Station Dasan at Ny-Alesund, Svalbard, Norway (79ON, 12OE). The Arctic copepod was identified as Calanus gracialis using phylogenetic analysis based on the LSU rDNA gene

it showed 100% identity with the sequence of the Antarctic Calanus gracialis LSU rDNA gene. We synthesized a cDNA library from the Arctic copepod Calanus gracialis, converted it to phagemids and sequenced expressed sequence tags (ESTs). Of these, Calanus gracialiss heat shock protein 60 gene was further characterized. The ORF of hsp 60 consisted of about 1,800 bp. We also confirmed that the recombinant protein of hsp 60 made approximately 108 kDa after overexpression in E.coli system. This is the first report on hsp 60 of the Arctic copepod Calanus gracialis.