EXPRESSION OF ALPHA-FETOPROTEIN IN THE EARTHWORM EUDRILUS EUGENIAE

Abstract

The earthworm Eudrilus eugeniae, commonly called as “African night-crawler” is a segmented animal which is divided into three major segments such as anterior, clitellar and posterior segments. The earthworm has enormous ability to regenerate the autotomized or lost body parts. The clitellar region plays a pivotal role in the regeneration of both anterior and posterior region of earthworm. In the present study, the Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) sequence was retrieved from Eudrilus eugeniae transcriptome dataset and we found a contig in the size of 1873bp with 609 amino acids. The expression of the AFP was not detected in the body segment but the expression of the protein was confirmed only in clitellar and regenerative blastema by the immunoblot technique. Both in the clitellum and regenerative blastema, the AFP was located in the nucleus. The data suggest that AFP has a decisive role in the regeneration of earthworms.