Genetic variant and inheritance of the 35K protease in digestive juice of silkworm, Bombyx mori

The digestive juice of the larvae of the silkworm, Bombyx mori include many proteases. Some were isolated and characterized (EGUCHI and IWAMOTo, 1982; SASAKI and SUZUKI, 1982; KIDO et al., 1986; KoTANI et al., 1999), but their heterogeneity has not been investigated, for except one case (EGUCHI and YOSHITAKE, 1967). We purified an enzyme named as 35K protease from silkworm digestive juice (JIANG et al., 2000). This enzyme is a chymotrypsin-like protease and was inhibited by CI-8 (SHIRAI et al., 1997) in the larval hemolymph. During our investigation, we discovered polymorphism of the 35K protease from digestive juice of silkworm. In this paper, we focus on polymorphism and the mode of inheritance of 35K protease.