Isolation and characterisation of a cDNA encoding an actin protein from the mussel, Mytilus galloprovincialis

A full-length complementary DNA encoding an actin was isolated from a Mytil us galloprovincialis hemocyte library. This actin displays a typical 376 am ino acid open reading frame. Northern blotting indicated that the expressio n of the actin gene is particularly abundant in muscular tissues. This acti n cDNA will be useful as a potential genetic marker as a standard for expre ssion level in genetic regulation studies and will allow screening for the whole gene as well as its upstream regulation sequences.