[Isolation, phylogenetic analysis and developmental expression parttern of AmphiRab23b in amphioxus].

The hedgehog (Hh) pathway plays an important role during the embryonic development and is related to the progression of cancers. Rab23 is a crucial functional molecule in Hh pathway. However, there is no report about amphioxus Rab23 up to now except the annotations of two isoforms in the genome of Florida lancelet (Branchiostoma floridae). Here a 2062 bp full-length cDNA sequence of the Rab23, AmphiRab23b, was isolated from Chinese amphioxus (Branchiostoma belcheri), which included the UTRs and an open reading frame of 714 bp, encoding a protein of 237 amino acids. Phylogenetic analysis suggested that AmphiRab23b falled outside the vertebrate clade. But sequence analysis indicated that this putative AmphiRab23b protein contained a specific Rab23_lke domain, which implied that Rab23 gene was functional conservative during evolution. And its developmental expression pattern showed that AmphiRab23b was expressed in the differentiating neural plate and alimentary canal, as the same as the expression pattern of the homologous vertebrate genes, which suggested that AmphiRab23b may function in the development of nervous system and alimentary canal.