Cloning and sequence analysis of ribosomal protein S10 gene (RPS10) from Ailuropoda melanoleuca

40S ribosomal protein S10 is a protein encoded by the RPS10 gene in human, belonging to the S10E family of ribosomal proteins. To explore the structure characteristic of this gene of Ailuropoda melanoleuca, primers were designed based on the known nucleotide sequence of RPS10 gene. The RT-PCR and PCR strategy were employed to isolate cDNA and genome of RPS10 from A. melanoleuca respectively, followed by sequencing and analyz ing preliminarily. The results indicated that the length of cDNA fragment from giant panda is 549 bp in size, containing an open reading frame (ORF) of 498 bp, encoding 165 amino acids. The he genomic sequence is 5,862 bp in length, with five exons and four introns. The coding sequence shows a high degree of homology to those of Homo sapiens, Bos taurus, Mus musculus, Sus scrofa and Rattus norvegicus; the degree of homology was 92.37%, 94.38%, 89.76%, 92.77% and 89.16 %, respectively, while the homologies for amino acid sequences are 99.39%, 99.39%, 98.18 %, 98.79%, 98.18% and 98.30%, respectively. Primary structure analysis revealed that the molecular weight of the putative RPS10 protein is 18.86 kD, with a theoretical pI of 10.73. Based on topology prediction, there are four distinct types of functional sites in the RPS10 protein of giant panda.