Chapter 1, The Reptilian Spectacle - UWSpace - University of ...

scales differ noticeably in consisting of 3 closely spaced proteins centered around 12 kDa in the ß
keratin region and a greater expression of proteins corresponding with the α keratin region. In all
scales a faint and diffuse band appears at 24 kDa. An immunoblot of the same samples with the univ-ß
antibody (Figure 4-4) confirmed that the 12 kDa bands in parietal and ventral scales correspond with ß
keratins as do the faint 24 kDa bands. The antibody reacted only very weakly with the spectacle scale
samples, which is assumed to be due to low affinity rather than the absence of ß keratins.
24 kDa >
12 kDa >
S1 P1 V1 S2 P2 V2 S3 P3 V3
Figure 4-4. ß keratin immunoblot of spectacle (S), parietal (P) and ventral (V) scale proteins of
coachwhip snakes. The numbers in the lane labels refer to three different snakes. The univ-ß
antibody has a high affinity for the ß keratins of the parietal and ventral scales and a very low affinity
for those of the spectacle scale.
The antibody was further verified with corn snake spectacle, parietal and ventral scale
samples. A coomassie stained gel is shown in Figure 4-5 (next page) with a corresponding immunoblot
in Figure 4-6 (next page), demonstrating again the low affinity of the antibody for spectacle ß keratins.
Of note in Figure 4-5 is the variation between spectacle scales of the two individuals (S1 vs S2). While
both have a highly expressed ß keratin just larger than 12 kDa, the first individual, which was
amelanistic (i.e. albino) exhibits a second ß keratin just under 17 kDa. This second ß keratin was also
observed in a different and unrelated amelanistic individual, while the result from a different non-
amelanistic corn snake was similar to S2 (data not shown).
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