Zebrafish danio rerio proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA): Cloning and characterization

The zebrafish Danio rerio proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) gene was cloned after screening of embryonic cDNA library of 48 to 72 h after fertilization using random primer labelled human PCNA probe. Zebrafish PCNA gene cloned is 1247 bp including 5′-, 3′-untranslated regions and open reading frame (261 amino acids) and showed a high homology of amino acids to human (94.6%), mouse (92.7%), rat (93.5%), Xenopus (91.6%) and Drosophila (71.6%). It also expressed a transcript of approximately 1.3 kb in various tissues (head, liver, intestine, ovary) and cultured fibroblast cell line. This report help in the understanding of the PCNA's role in fish at the replication initiation folk and elongation.