Evolution of selenoproteins in the metazoan

BMC Genomics

Research Article

Qiong Liu¹  Jiazuan Ni¹  Liang Jiang² 

[1] College of Life Sciences, Shenzhen University, 518060, Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, PR, China;College of Life Sciences, Shenzhen University, 518060, Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, PR, China;College of Optoelectronic Engineering, Shenzhen University, 518060, Shenzhen, Guangdong Province PR, China;

关键词: Selenoprotein;    Selenocysteine;    Metazoan;    Evolution;    Bioinformatics;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2164-13-446

 received in 2012-04-24, accepted in 2012-08-20,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe selenocysteine (Sec) containing proteins, selenoproteins, are an important group of proteins present throughout all 3 kingdoms of life. With the rapid progression of selenoprotein research in the post-genomic era, application of bioinformatics methods to the identification of selenoproteins in newly sequenced species has become increasingly important. Although selenoproteins in human and other vertebrates have been investigated, studies of primitive invertebrate selenoproteomes are rarely reported outside of insects and nematodes.ResultA more integrated view of selenoprotein evolution was constructed using several representative species from different evolutionary eras. Using a SelGenAmic-based selenoprotein identification method, 178 selenoprotein genes were identified in 6 invertebrates: Amphimedon queenslandica, Trichoplax adhaerens, Nematostella vectensis, Lottia gigantean, Capitella teleta, and Branchiostoma floridae. Amphioxus was found to have the most abundant and variant selenoproteins of any animal currently characterized, including a special selenoprotein P (SelP) possessing 3 repeated Trx-like domains and Sec residues in the N-terminal and 2 Sec residues in the C-terminal. This gene structure suggests the existence of two different strategies for extension of Sec numbers in SelP for the preservation and transportation of selenium. In addition, novel eukaryotic AphC-like selenoproteins were identified in sponges.ConclusionComparison of various animal species suggests that even the most primitive animals possess a selenoproteome range and variety similar to humans. During evolutionary history, only a few new selenoproteins have emerged and few were lost. Furthermore, the massive loss of selenoproteins in nematodes and insects likely occurred independently in isolated partial evolutionary branches.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Jiang et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. 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.