Gene cloning, homology comparison and analysis of the main functional structure domains of beta estrogen receptor in Jining Gray goat

• We firstly cloned Jining Gray goat ERβ gene with a complete ORF.
• The nucleotide and amino acids homologies of ERβ between animals’ species were analyzed.
• The main functional structural domains of Jining Gray goat ERβ were predicted.
• The tertiary structures of DBD and LBD in both different goats were compared.

To clarify the molecular evolution and characteristic of beta estrogen receptor (ERβ) gene in Jining Gray goat in China, the entire ERβ gene from Jining Gray goat ovary was amplified, identified and sequenced, and the gene sequences were compared with those of other animals. Functional structural domains and variations in DNA binding domains (DBD) and ligand binding domains (LBD) between Jining Gray goat and Boer goat were analyzed. The results indicate that the ERβ gene in Jining Gray goat includes a 1584 bp sequence with a complete open-reading-frame (ORF), encoding a 527 amino acid (aa) receptor protein. Compared to other species, the nucleotide homology is 73.9–98.9% and the amino acid homology is 79.5–98.5%. The main antigenic structural domains lie from the 97th aa to the 286th aa and from the 403rd aa to the 527th aa. The hydrophilicity and the surface probability of the structural domains are distributed throughout a range of amino acids. There are two different amino acids in the DBD and three different amino acids in the LBD between Jining Gray and Boer goats, resulting in dramatically different spatial structures for ERβ protein. These differences may explain the different biological activities of ERβ between the two goat species. This study firstly acquired the whole ERβ gene sequence of Jining Gray goat with a complete open reading frame, and analyzed its gene evolutionary relationship and predicted its mainly functional structural domains, which may very help for further understanding the genome evolution and gene diversity of goat ERβ.

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