Molecular Characterization of Lucilia sericata Angiopoietin-1 as a therapeutic Potential in Wound Healing

The increasing prevalence of chronic ulcers and burden of disease necessitates in the world the greatly important production of new recombinant proteins. The angiopoietin-1enzyme is a portion of growth factors group which is secreted by Lucilia sericata (Diptera: Calliphoridae) larvae when they are exposed to wounds to ensure maggot therapy. It is one of most potent proteins in wound healing. With respect to its important role, we characterized angiopoeitin-1 gene of L. sericata and provide some basic information on its identity. The mid-part, 3´end and 5´ends of angiopoietin-1 mRNA sequence were characterized using different sets of primers including exon junction, conserved and specific region primers via Rapid Amplification of cDNA Ends (RACE). Its structural features was studied by in silica modeling. The nucleic acid sequence (1827bp) and amino acid residue(608aa) of angiopoietin-1 were determined and BLAST analysis revealed their high identity (85%) with that of the larval house fly Musca domestica mRNA sequence. Furthermore, homology modeling revealed that its structure is very similar to the structurally important domains of angiopoietin-1 in Lucilia cuprina. This study provides some basic molecular and structural information on this entity. The present results are informative and necessary to evaluate the role of this gene in recombinant protein development in future studies to wound healing.