Mutations of an arylalkylamine-N-acetyltransferase, Bm-iAANAT, are responsible for silkworm melanism mutant.

Coloration is one of the most variable characters in animals and provides rich material for studying the developmental genetic basis of pigment patterns. In the silkworm, more than 100 gene mutation systems are related to aberrant color patterns. The melanism (mln) is a rare body color mutant that exhibits an easily distinguishable phenotype in both larval and adult silkworms. By positional cloning, we identified the candidate gene of the mln locus, Bm-iAANAT, whose homologous gene (Dat) converts dopamine into N-acetyldopamine, a precursor for N-acetyldopamine sclerotin in Drosophila. In the mln mutant, two types of abnormal Bm-iAANAT transcripts were identified, whose expression levels are markedly lower than the wild type (WT). Moreover, dopamine content was approximately twice as high in the sclerified tissues (head, thoracic legs, and anal plate) of the mutant as in WT, resulting in phenotypic differences between the two. Quantitative reverse transcription PCR analyses showed that other genes involved in the melanin metabolism pathway were regulated by the aberrant Bm-iAANAT activity in mln mutant in different ways and degrees. We therefore propose that greater accumulation of dopamine results from the functional deficiency of Bm-iAANAT in the mutant, causing a darker pattern in the sclerified regions than in the WT. In summary, our results indicate that Bm-iAANAT is responsible for the color pattern of the silkworm mutant, mln. To our knowledge, this is the first report showing a role for arylalkylamine-N-acetyltransferases in color pattern mutation in Lepidoptera.