WormBase thinks there is no such gene as trpa-2 :(. Was this renamed or does it not exist? Thanks, Paul Sternberg
The only gene called trpa2 I could find, is in zebrafish (where it was later renamed to trpa1b) (http://www.ensembl.org/Danio_rerio/genetreeview?db=core;gene=ENSDARG00000031875)
And it seems to be a duplication of trpa1 based on the phylogenetic trees.
All other species I looked at (with exception of Ciona) seem to have only one member in the gene family.
Was there some paper describing trpa-2, or what is the reason you are missing it?
This was mentioned in Miriam Goodman’s mechanosensation chapter, in a tabel.
Michael, note that this is posted under WB=wormbook…(confusing)
the best would be probably to contact Miriam and see what she thinks. There are also only 2 papers connected to the gene, 1.) is the wormbook chapter and 2.) is a promotor-analysis for fax sites (which was negative btw).
A quick Google search finds this Nature paper from Bill Schafer’s group, titled Caenorhabditis elegans TRPA-1 functions in mechanosensation, including the following:
Our homology searches identified two TRPA1 family members in C. elegans (Supplementary Fig. 1 online). One, C. elegans TRPA-1 (41% similarity, 23% identity to mouse TRPA1), is an ortholog of mouse TRPA1 and D. melanogaster TRPA1; the other, TRPA-2, is a distant family member with no predicted ankyrin domains. (Alignment is shown in Supplementary Fig. 2 online.)The paper lists TRPA-2 as being M05B5.6. Neither the name trpa-2 nor the Schafer group’s paper is on the Wormbase page
yup you are right.
It would be nice if someone could have a look at the tm* mutants, which have bits of trpa-2 knocked out, to see if they have any mechanosensation deficiency. So far the observed phenotypes from the knockouts and RNAi are not too great in my opinion (nobody looked at touch responses).