Identification of <i>Drosophila melanogaster</i> Strain-Specific Sequence Variations in the <i>Nepl15</i> Transcript of Oregon-R relative to FlyBase Data

According to FlyBase, the <i>Drosophila melanogaster</i> (fruit fly) <i>Neprilysin-like 15 (Nepl15)</i> gene has only one annotated transcript and a 686-amino acid-long protein. However, <i>Nepl15</i> transcripts exhibit organ- and sex-specific differential expression, and <i>Nepl15</i> knock-out mutation results in sex-dependent contrasting phenotypes. Thus, we investigated whether unreported sex-specific <i>Nepl15</i> transcripts exist. Our sequencing results of <i>Nepl15</i> cDNA synthesized from the Oregon-R adult male and female RNA samples show a few changes in the codons, which alter the amino acid sequences in our samples. However, the changes do not impact the subcellular localization or overall Nepl15 protein structure as determined by bioinformatics analyses.