A novel function for nucleoside diphosphate kinase in Drosophila.

Nucleoside diphosphate (NDP) kinase is an enzyme that transfers the gamma-phosphate of nucleoside triphosphates to nucleoside diphosphates. Besides this well-defined role, recent evidence suggests that NDP kinase may be implicated in a wide variety of essential cellular processes. In this paper, we showed that the NDP kinase of Drosophila exhibited protein kinase activity as well as autophosphorylation. Ovalbumin was phosphorylated with guanosine 5'-(3-O-thio)triphosphate (GTP gamma S) or ATP. Protein kinase activity was not detected in NDP kinase mutant, abnormal wing discs (awd). These results suggest that this activity could be one of the functions of NDP kinase essential for normal fly development, since awd gene is lethal.