Isolation of a member of ets gene family in the polychaete annelid Perinereis cultrifera

Numerous genes belonging to the ets gene family have been described for a f ew years. The founder of this family is the v-ets proto-oncogene, which is the viral counterpart of the chicken c-ets-1 proto-oncogene. Main research was carried out both on Vertebrates, Drosophila and the nematod Caenorhabdi tis elegans. Previously two genes of this family named Nd ets and Nd erg, w ere isolated in the polychaete annelid Hediste (Nereis) diversicolor. Here we have described the isolation of one gene from the ets family in another polychaete annelid named Perinereis cultrifera. By polymerase chain reactio n using degenerated primers, we have amplified an approximatively 515 pb ge nomic region encoding the ETS domain and another domain designed as "R" dom ain by Qi et al. (1992) and which can mediate transactivation. By using thi s method for isolating members of the ets gene family, we are going to real ize a phylogenetic study of the phylum of polychaete annelids.