Identification of Glyceraldehyde 3-Phosphate Dehydrogenase Sequence and Expression Profiles in Tree Shrew (Tupaia belangeri)

The tree shrews (Tupaia belangeri) diverged from the primate order (Primates) and are classified as Scandentia, a separate taxonomic group of mammals. The tree shrew has been suggested to use an animal model to study human disease but the genomic sequences of tree shrew is largely unidentified. Here we identified the full-length cDNA sequence of a housekeeping gene, Glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate Dehydrogenase (GAPDH), in tree shrew. We further constructed a phylogenetic family tree base on GAPDH molecules of various organisms and compared GAPDH sequences with human and other small experimental animals. These study revealed that tree shrew was closer to human than mouse, rat, rabbit and guinea pig. The Quantitative Reverse Transcription PCR and western blot analysis further demonstrated that GAPDH expressed in various tissues in tree shrew as a general conservative housekeeping proteins as in human. Our findings provide the novel genetic knowledge of the tree shrew and strong evidences that tree shrew can be an experimental model system to study human disorders.