Table 1.

Constituent ZP proteins of the VE of abalone eggs

Gene	VE Mass Spectra*
	H. corrugata	H. fulgens
VERL	1 (1)	4 (5)
VEZP2	1 (1)	2 (2)
VEZP3	0 (0)	2 (5)
VEZP4	0 (0)	6 (27)
VEZP5	2 (3)	2 (10)
VEZP6	4 (57)	2 (11)
VEZP7	1 (2)	3 (12)
VEZP8	3 (50)	4 (2)
VEZP9	12 (122)	6 (177)
VEZP10	1 (1)	4 (12)
ZPA	0 (0)	0 (0)

Solubilized VE material (Fig. 1) from eggs of pink (H. corrugata) and green (H. fulgens) abalone were subjected to MS/MS, and mass spectra were matched by SEQUEST to the pink abalone EST library. The number of unique peptides and total number of spectral counts for unique peptides (in parentheses) matching to each of 11 ovary-expressed ZP domain genes are shown. Results from mass spectrometry confirm the presence of VERL, known to be a major component of the VE (49) as well as identifying 9 of 10 recently identified ZP domain proteins (VEZP2 to VEZP10) as constituents of the VE. Based on the relative abundance of spectral counts, which can be used as a proxy for the relative abundance of peptides (44), VEZP9 appears to be the most abundant of these proteins. ZP domain proteins from the EST library not matched to VE peptides are given an arbitrary alphabetical designation (ZPA).

*5% false discovery rate.