Molecular Characterization of Two Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinases: p38 MAP Kinase and Ribosomal S6 Kinase From Bombyx mori (Lepidoptera: Bombycidae), and Insight Into Their Roles in Response to BmNPV Infection

Muhammad, Azharuddin; Toufeeq, Shahzad; Yu, Hai-Zhong; Wang, Jie; Zhang, Shang-Zhi; Li, Bing; Li, Zhen; Yang, Li-Ang; Hu, Pei; Ma, Yan; Xu, Jia-Ping

The Bmp38 (GenBank NM_001043531.1) and BmS6K (GenBank NM_001202528.1) were identified from transcriptome database of B. mori (Wang et al. 2016 were identified at positions 20-304, with 3 N-glycosylation and 14 ubiquitination sites (Fig. 2A) . The BmS6K cDNA contains 2,262 bp ORF encoding 753 amino acids with calculated MW of 84.5 kDa and IP of 6.45. No UTR was found in BmS6K cDNA sequence. Two S_TKc domains along with extension to Ser/Thr-type protein kinases domain (S_TK_x) were predicted in BmS6K amino acid sequence, with 3 N-glycosylation and 39 ubiquitination sites (Fig. 2B) . Multiple sequence alignment of Bmp38 and BmS6K with proteins of other organisms showed that Bmp38 and BmS6K include an activation loop, a conserved Thr-Glu-Tyr (TEY) and Thr-Leu-Tyr (TLY) phosphorylation motifs, respectively. Bmp38 has an ED site and a substrate-binding site. Pairwise sequence analysis of Bmp38 protein sequence shows 84.8, 91.2, 98.3, and 70.3% similarity with Drosophila melanogaster, Nasonia vitripennis, Danaus plexippus plexippus, and Homo sapiens, respectively. Similarly, the BS6K protein sequence shows 58.9, 91.5, 94.5, and 85.9% similarity with D. melanogaster, Pieris rapae, Spodoptera litura, and Papilio machaon (Fig. 3A-C) .