Cloning and sequencing of a carp beta s-crystallin cDNA.

The mRNAs were extracted from common carp (Cyprinus carpio) lenses, purified, reverse transcribed, dC tailed and cloned into Escherichia coli with pBR322 as vector. The cloning efficiency was around 1 X 10(7) colonies per micrograms of mRNA. A clone (pC20) was found by hybrid-arrested to contain the cDNA related to carp crystallins. However, comparison of the derived amino-acid sequence with bovine gamma-II and beta s-crystallins indicates that this carp crystallin sequence resembles closely the bovine beta s-crystallin and should be better classified as such except that this fish sequence does not contain the N-terminal 'arm' of four amino-acid residues present in bovine beta s-crystallin.