Chicken Polyclonal Antibody to Fibrillarin
Cat# CPCA-Fib

Nop1p was originally identified as a nucleolar protein of bakers yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae (accession P15646). The Nop1p protein is 327 amino acids in size (34.5kDa), is essential for yeast viability, and is localized in the nucleoli (1). The systematic name for S. cerevisiae Nop1 is YDL014W, and it is now known to be part of the small subunit processome complex, involved in the processing of pre-18S ribosomal RNA. Nop1p is the yeast homologue of a protein apparently found in all eukaryotes and archea generally called fibrillarin. Fibrillarin/Nop1p is extraordinarily conserved, so that the yeast and human proteins are 67% identical, and the human protein can functionally replace the yeast protein. An alignment of fibrillarin and homologues from a variety of species showing the high cross species sequence conservation: download from here. This means that suitably cross-reactive antibodies to Nop1p/fibrillarin, like MCA-4A4, can be used to reveal nucleoli and study fibrillarin/Nop1p in all eukaryotes and archea tested to date.

Human fibrillarin has been characterized (accession P22087) and the human fibrillarin gene is located on chromosome 19 (19q13.1). Fibrillarin/Nop1p proteins have been cloned and sequenced from several other species (e.g. Mouse, accession P35550, Xenopus accession P22232, C. elegans accession Q22053, and S. pombe accession P35551. The N terminal ~80 amino acids contain multiple copies based on the peptide RGG, or arginine-glycine-glycine, sometimes referred to as GAR repeats, characteristic of the GAR family of molecules. The remaining ~240 amino acids consist of the so called fibrillarin domain. A fibrillarin homologue has also been identified in the genome of the archean Methanococcus (accession NC_000909). This protein lacks the RGG rich N-terminal extension but is clearly homologous to the other sequences throughout all of the fibrillarin domain. The 3D structure of this molecule has been determined and shown to consist of 2 extended β-sheets flanked by α-helixes (Medline link). Patients with the autoimmune disease scleroderma often have strong circulating autoantibodies to a ~34kDa protein which was subsequently found to be fibrillarin. Recent studies show that knock out of the fibrillarin gene in mice results in embryonic lethality, although mice with only one functional fibrillarin/Nop1p gene were viable (3).

Fibrillarin/Nop1p antibody has become widely used as a convenient marker for nucleoli in a wide variety of species (e.g. 4-6). The HGNC name for this protein is FBL. To raise the CPCA-Fib antibody, mice were injected with full length recombinant human fibrillarin.