Expression Changes of Apoptosis Related Genes after Pentachlorophenol Exposure and Molecular Cloning and Phylogenetic Analysis of caspase-2 in Zebrafish
五氯酚暴露诱导斑马鱼胚胎细胞凋亡相关基因的变化及caspase-2基因克隆和系统进化分析

Employing microarray analysis, we found that 14 apoptosis related genes including caspase-2 changed their expressions after pentachlorophenol exposure to zebrafish embryos. Using bioinformatics, we modeled the phylogenetic tree of these functional genes and made phylogenetic analysis on caspase-2 gene, related to apoptosis induced by toxicants. Zebrafish caspase-2 comprises 10 exons and 9 introns. The caspase-2 cDNA is 1308bp long and contains an open reading frame predicted to encode a protein with 435 amino acids. Protein sequence alignments and phylogenetic analysis among 6 vertebrates showed Caspase-2 proetein is highly conserved during evolution. Performing RT-PCR, zebrafish caspase-2 cDNA was cloned and confirmed. Taken together, our results indicated that zebrafish caspase-2 gene could be used as a model molecular to evaluate the effect of toxicants on apoptosis.