Comparative gene expression in toxic versus non-toxic strains of the marine dinoflagellate Alexandrium minutum

BMC Genomics

Research Article

Bernd Krock¹  Allan D Cembella¹  Uwe John¹  Sára Beszteri¹  Ines Yang²  Gernot Glöckner³  Alexander Goesmann⁴ 

[1] Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar-und Meeresforschung, Am Handelshafen 12, 27570, Bremerhaven, Germany;Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar-und Meeresforschung, Am Handelshafen 12, 27570, Bremerhaven, Germany;School of Biosciences, University of Exeter, Stocker Road, EX4 4QD, Exeter, UK;Fritz Lipmann Institute for Age Research, Beutenbergstraß 11, 07745, Jena, Germany;Institute for Biochemistry I, University of Cologne, Joseph-Stelzmann-Str. 52, 50931, Cologne, Germany;Berlin Center for Genomics in Biodiversity Research, Königin-Luise-Str. 1-3, 14195, Berlin, Germany;Universität Bielefeld, CeBiTec, 33594, Bielefeld, Germany;

关键词: Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning;    Saxitoxin;    Toxin Content;    Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning Toxin;    Toxic Strain;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2164-11-248

 received in 2009-08-24, accepted in 2010-04-19,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe dinoflagellate Alexandrium minutum typically produces paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) toxins, which are known only from cyanobacteria and dinoflagellates. While a PSP toxin gene cluster has recently been characterized in cyanobacteria, the genetic background of PSP toxin production in dinoflagellates remains elusive.ResultsWe constructed and analysed an expressed sequence tag (EST) library of A. minutum, which contained 15,703 read sequences yielding a total of 4,320 unique expressed clusters. Of these clusters, 72% combined the forward-and reverse reads of at least one bacterial clone. This sequence resource was then used to construct an oligonucleotide microarray. We analysed the expression of all clusters in three different strains. While the cyanobacterial PSP toxin genes were not found among the A. minutum sequences, 192 genes were differentially expressed between toxic and non-toxic strains.ConclusionsBased on this study and on the lack of identified PSP synthesis genes in the two existent Alexandrium tamarense EST libraries, we propose that the PSP toxin genes in dinoflagellates might be more different from their cyanobacterial counterparts than would be expected in the case of a recent gene transfer. As a starting point to identify possible PSP toxin-associated genes in dinoflagellates without relying on a priori sequence information, the sequences only present in mRNA pools of the toxic strain can be seen as putative candidates involved in toxin synthesis and regulation, or acclimation to intracellular PSP toxins.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Yang et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.