Functional conservation of the apoptotic machinery from coral to man: the diverse and complex Bcl-2 and caspase repertoires of Acropora millepora
Moya, Aurelie, Sakamaki, Kazuhiro, Mason, Benjamin M., Huisman, Lotte, Forêt, Sylvain, Weiss, Yvonne, Bull, Tara, Tomii, Kentaro, Imai, Kenichiro, Hayward, David C., Ball, Eldon E., and Miller, David J. (2016) Functional conservation of the apoptotic machinery from coral to man: the diverse and complex Bcl-2 and caspase repertoires of Acropora millepora. BMC Genomics, 17. 62. pp. 1-20.
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Abstract
Background: Apoptotic cell death is a defining and ubiquitous characteristic of metazoans, but its evolutionary origins are unclear. Although Caenorhabditis and Drosophila played key roles in establishing the molecular bases of apoptosis, it is now clear that cell death pathways of these animals do not reflect ancestral characteristics. Conversely, recent work suggests that the apoptotic networks of cnidarians may be complex and vertebrate-like, hence characterization of the apoptotic complement of representatives of the basal cnidarian class Anthozoa will help us to understand the evolution of the vertebrate apoptotic network.
Results: We describe the Bcl-2 and caspase protein repertoires of the coral Acropora millepora, making use of the comprehensive transcriptomic data available for this species. Molecular phylogenetics indicates that some Acropora proteins are orthologs of specific mammalian pro-apoptotic Bcl-2 family members, but the relationships of other Bcl-2 and caspases are unclear. The pro-or anti-apoptotic activities of coral Bcl-2 proteins were investigated by expression in mammalian cells, and the results imply functional conservation of the effector/anti-apoptotic machinery despite limited sequence conservation in the anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 proteins. A novel caspase type ("Caspase-X"), containing both inactive and active caspase domains, was identified in Acropora and appears to be restricted to corals. When expressed in mammalian cells, full-length caspase-X caused loss of viability, and a truncated version containing only the active domain was more effective in inducing cell death, suggesting that the inactive domain might modulate activity in the full-length protein. Structure prediction suggests that the active and inactive caspase domains in caspase-X are likely to interact, resulting in a structure resembling that of the active domain in procaspase-8 and the inactive caspase domain in the mammalian c-FLIP anti-apoptotic factor.
Conclusions: The data presented here confirm that many of the basic mechanisms involved in both the intrinsic and extrinsic apoptotic pathways were in place in the common ancestor of cnidarians and bilaterians. With the identification of most or all of the repertoires of coral Bcl-2 and caspases, our results not only provide new perspectives on the evolution of apoptotic pathways, but also a framework for future experimental studies towards a complete understanding of coral bleaching mechanisms, in which apoptotic cell death might be involved.
Item ID: | 42669 |
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Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
ISSN: | 1471-2164 |
Keywords: | apoptosis, caspase, Bcl-2, coral, Acropora millepora, cnidaria |
Additional Information: | © 2016 Moya et al. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
Funders: | Australian Research Council (ARC), ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CECRS), Platform for Drug Discovery, Informatics, and Structural Life Science (PDDISLS), Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (MECSST) |
Projects and Grants: | ARC CECRS DP1095343 |
Date Deposited: | 10 Feb 2016 07:42 |
FoR Codes: | 31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3101 Biochemistry and cell biology > 310102 Cell development, proliferation and death @ 30% 31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3104 Evolutionary biology > 310410 Phylogeny and comparative analysis @ 50% 31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3105 Genetics > 310510 Molecular evolution @ 20% |
SEO Codes: | 97 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 970106 Expanding Knowledge in the Biological Sciences @ 100% |
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