Fly fishing for GSTs: a unified nomenclature for mammalian and insect glutathione transferases

Abstract

Previously, due to the paucity of sequence data, only two broad classes of glutathione transferases (GSTs) were identified in insects. The recent completion of the sequencing of the Drosophila melanogaster genome has allowed the identification of a considerable number of insect GSTs via a systematic comparison of the genome with sequences from established GST classes. Strikingly, many GST classes found in mammals also occur in Drosophila. These results suggest that the nomenclature originally proposed for invertebrates GSTs, can be extended to harmonise with that used for humans and other species.