MOLECULAR ANALYSIS OF PROTEINS OF BMP15 GENE IN RUMINANTS AND NON- RUMINANTS

Résumé

Bone morphogenetic protein 15 (BMP 15) is amember of the transforming growth factorB (TGFB) superfamily that is expressed by oocytes and play key roles in granulosa cell development and. fertility in animal. Itis a gene that has major effect on ovulation rate and fecundity leading to its classification as a fecundity gene with the name FecX. This study investigated the molecular genetic variation of proteins of BMP15 gene of cattle, sheep, goats, swine, and chicken with a view to providing relevant genetic information for breeding and selection programmes in the studied species using computational method. A total of thirty seven (3 7) BMP 15 nucleotide sequences comprising goats (18), sheep (6), cattle (6), swine (4) and chicken (3) were retrieved from the GenBank (NCBI) (www.ncbi.nim.nih. gov). Sequence alignment, translation and comparison of the BMP 15 gene of the various species were done with ClustalW using IUB substitution matrix, gap open ‘penalty of 15 and gap extension penalty of 6.66. The amino acid composition revealed the abundance of leucine amino acid in all the studied species, and the predicted 3D BMPI 5 protein structure aligned well with the template. The information emanating from this study may be important for chemist, drug developers, breeders and molecular biologists in the development of functional hypotheses about hypothetical proteins, improving phasing signals in crystallography, selecting sites for mutagenesis and thus help in marker-assisted selection (MAS) for high litter size productivity in various livestock species.