Antiproliferative and Antimicrobial Potentials of a Lectin from Aplysia kurodai (Sea Hare) Eggs.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Swarna RR
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8306185 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Egg lectins occur in a variety of animals ranging from mollusks to vertebrates. A few examples of molluscan egg lectins have been reported, including that of the sea hare Aplysia kurodai; however, their biological functions in the egg remain unclarified. We report the isolation, determination of primary structure, and possible functions of A.kurodai lectin (AKL) from the egg mass of A. kurodai. We obtained AKL as an inseparable mixture of isoproteins with a relative molecular mass of approximately 32 kDa by affinity purification. The hemagglutinating activity of AKL against rabbit erythrocytes was inhibited most potently by galacturonic acid and moderately by xylose. Nucleotide sequencing of corresponding cDNA obtained by rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE) allowed us to deduce complete amino acid sequences. The mature polypeptides consisted of 218- or 219-amino acids with three repeated domains. The amino acid sequence had similarities to hypothetical proteins of Aplysia spp., or domain DUF3011 of uncharacterized bacterial proteins. AKL is the first member of the DUF3011 family whose function, carbohydrate recognition, was revealed. Treatment of the egg with galacturonic acid, an AKL sugar inhibitor, resulted in deformation of the veliger larvae, suggesting that AKL is involved in organogenesis in the developmental stage of A. kurodai.
| S-EPMC5484111 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The common sea hare Aplysia kurodai is known to be a good source for the enzymes degrading seaweed polysaccharides. Recently four cellulases, i.e., 95, 66, 45, and 21 kDa enzymes, were isolated from A. kurodai (Tsuji et al., 2013). The former three cellulases were regarded as glycosyl-hydrolase-family 9 (GHF9) enzymes, while the 21 kDa cellulase was suggested to be a GHF45 enzyme. The 21 kDa cellulase was significantly heat stable, and appeared to be advantageous in performing heterogeneous expression and protein-engineering study. In the present study, we determined some enzymatic properties of the 21 kDa cellulase and cloned its cDNA to provide the basis for the protein engineering study of this cellulase. The purified 21 kDa enzyme, termed AkEG21 in the present study, hydrolyzed carboxymethyl cellulose with an optimal pH and temperature at 4.5 and 40°C, respectively. AkEG21 was considerably heat-stable, i.e., it was not inactivated by the incubation at 55°C for 30 min. AkEG21 degraded phosphoric-acid-swollen cellulose producing cellotriose and cellobiose as major end products but hardly degraded oligosaccharides smaller than tetrasaccharide. This indicated that AkEG21 is an endolytic β-1,4-glucanase (EC 3.2.1.4). A cDNA of 1013 bp encoding AkEG21 was amplified by PCR and the amino-acid sequence of 197 residues was deduced. The sequence comprised the initiation Met, the putative signal peptide of 16 residues for secretion and the catalytic domain of 180 residues, which lined from the N-terminus in this order. The sequence of the catalytic domain showed 47-62% amino-acid identities to those of GHF45 cellulases reported in other mollusks. Both the catalytic residues and the N-glycosylation residues known in other GHF45 cellulases were conserved in AkEG21. Phylogenetic analysis for the amino-acid sequences suggested the close relation between AkEG21 and fungal GHF45 cellulases.
| S-EPMC4123733 | biostudies-literature
Project description:β-1,4-Mannanase (EC 3.2.1.78) catalyzes the hydrolysis of β-1,4-glycosidic bonds within mannan, a major constituent group of the hemicelluloses. Bivalves and gastropods possess β-1,4-mannanase and may degrade mannan in seaweed and/or phytoplankton to obtain carbon and energy using the secreted enzymes in their digestive systems. In the present study, the crystal structure of AkMan, a gastropod β-1,4-mannanase prepared from the common sea hare Aplysia kurodai, was determined at 1.05 Å resolution. This is the first report of the three-dimensional structure of a gastropod β-1,4-mannanase. The structure was compared with bivalve β-1,4-mannanase and the roles of residues in the catalytic cleft were investigated. No obvious binding residue was found in subsite +1 and the substrate-binding site was exposed to the molecular surface, which may account for the enzymatic properties of mannanases that can digest complex substrates such as glucomannan and branched mannan.
| S-EPMC3497972 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The marine opisthobranch mollusk, Aplysia californica, is a powerful experimental system in cellular, molecular, and behavioral neuroscience as well as cell and evolutionary biology because of the distinctive organization of its nervous system, which makes it advantageous for cellular and comparative analysis of a variety of behaviors and learning and memory. Aplysia's large neurons allow examination of neuronal architecture of instinctive and learned behaviors at the level of single characterized cells and defined cellular compartments (e.g., synapses). As a result, many fundamental problems in neurobiology can be analyzed more effectively in Aplysias than in Drosophila, C. elegans, and vertebrates. In a larger sense work on Aplysia is synergistic with these other experimental systems. Here, we are sequencing the genome of Aplysia both to gain access to genomic mechanisms of basic neuronal and other functions and to study these mechanisms in real physiological time with single-neuron resolution. The distinction of Aplysia as a neurobiological and cellular model system is due to the following: (1) Its nervous system has a relatively small number of nerve cells. (2) Many of these cells are large (sometimes gigantic, up to 1 mm in diameter). (3) As a result of their size, pigmentation, and position in the nervous system, many cells can easily be uniquely identified at the single cell level and can be reliably linked to the animal's behavior. (4) The cells provide enough messenger RNA to generate cDNA libraries from single cells. (5) These neurons can be isolated and cultured in vitro and they form circuits which can be explored in detail at molecular and cellular levels. (6) The animal generates a variety of behaviors, many of which can be specified in terms of their underlying circuitry. (7) Some of these behaviors can be modified by different forms of learning. Aplysia are easy to rear in the laboratory from fertilized ova to mature adults and it is possible to obtain an inbred stock of reproducing animals. In 1995, the NIH established a National Resource Center for Aplysia at the University of Miami to meet the growing needs of the biomedical community. This Center supplies over 20,000 cultured Aplysia at all developmental stages annually to the research community throughout the world. This community consists of more than 100 laboratories and over a thousand investigators with overall research budgets of tens of millions of dollars annually. In addition to its value to the neurobiological community, Aplysia is also of interest from a comparative biological perspective. Aplysia is a free-living representative of Mollusca, the second largest animal phylum (after Arthropoda). Members of this phylum have received relatively little genetic study, even though they are of considerable significance for evolutionary and developmental biology and for basic and applied biomedical studies. Aplysia has a stable diploid genome consisting of 17 haploid chromosomes with highly polyploid central neurons. The genome size of about 850 million base pairs is typical for many molluscan species. Expressed sequence tags (ESTs) have already been sequenced, including more than 50,000 unique sequences representing several thousand genes, from the central nervous system of Aplysia – see Moroz et al (2006) . These ESTs have revealed many signaling molecules and pathways, including their key receptors, kinases and substrate proteins, but many rare yet key genes (e.g., ionic channels) have escaped detection so far. To achieve a complete understanding of the biologically important genes and their regulatory elements, a careful annotation and analysis of the sequenced genome is analysis is required. The Aplysia genome project will serve two major functions. First, it will be important for neuroscience by providing a critical resource for facilitating: (a) identification of all genes and regulatory regions of this valuable organism, (b) assembling microarrays and cDNA libraries for global expression studies, including those based on single neurons and their processes, and (c) gene function analysis by RNA interference screens. Second, the Aplysia genome will be important for comparative, developmental and evolutionary biology. Aplysia will serve as a complementary invertebrate/molluscan genomic model from the most diverse and second largest clade of bilaterally symmetrical animals. The Aplysia genome will promote studies of metazoan evolution, developmental biology, neuroscience, and human health, including identifying and validating therapeutic targets for human disorders that are related to aging, cancer, the central nervous system, as well as learning and memory mechanisms.
2022-10-11 | GSE79231 | GEO
Project description:The monitoring of global transcription patterns during development is a useful first step to understand mechanisms underlying growth, differentiation and patterning in a given species. However such large scale developmental studies are so far only available from a few selected model organisms such as mouse, Drosophila and the nematode C. elegans. Genomic scale information from the lophotrochozoa is now emerging. The recently characterized neuronal transcriptome of the sea hare Aplysia californica (~200’000 ESTs and ~40,000 unique non-redundant sequences representing about 55-70% of all neuronal transcripts including splice forms and non-coding RNAs) provides new insights and opportunities into problems of molluscan development and specifically neurogenesis. Regulatory genes used in development are recruited for the functions of adult nervous systems such as synaptogenesis, specific wiring in networks and structural changes underlying synaptic plasticity. While this similarity reflects a basic concept in biology, namely the recruitment of the same genes for different functions, it has never been tested on a large scale genomic level. We used representative oligo-arrays constructed from transcripts obtained from the Aplysia nervous system to explore the following two questions: 1) What neuronal genes are differentially expressed during embryonic development of the sea hare Aplysia. 2) What gene expression changes can be observed in correlation with gastrulation, metamorphosis, and larval neurogenesis. For this purpose we hybridized RNA from 3 embryonic (64 cells, gastrula, trochophore) and 4 larval stages (pre-hatching, post-hatching, pre-metamorphosis, postmetamorphosis) against a reference sample consisting of equal contributions from all stages. Our analysis revealed that all embryonic and larval stages can be distinguished based on their transcription profiles. A comparison of the Aplysia atlas with similar studies in Drosophila and mouse reveals interesting differences. We identified several new transcription factors which are differentially expressed during early embryonic development. Various other transcripts involved in metabolism and differentiation were characterized. These genes can be candidate targets for understanding neuronal growth, synaptogenesis and memory mechanisms. We conclude that the microarray technology provides us with a powerful tool for efficient survey and functional annotation of the neuronal transcriptome in Aplysia.
2010-10-05 | GSE14941 | GEO
Project description:Sea lettuce (Ulva pertusa) is a nuisance species of green algae that is found all over the world. East-Asian species of the marine gastropod, the sea hare Aplysia kurodai, shows a clear feeding preference for sea lettuce. Compared with cellulose, sea lettuce contains a higher amount of starch as a storage polysaccharide. However, the entire amylolytic system in the digestive fluid of A. kurodai has not been studied in detail. We purified α-amylases and α-glucosidases from the digestive fluid of A. kurodai and investigated the synergistic action of these enzymes on sea lettuce. A. kurodai contain two α-amylases (59 and 80 kDa) and two α-glucosidases (74 and 86 kDa). The 59-kDa α-amylase, but not the 80-kDa α-amylase, was markedly activated by Ca(2+) or Cl(-). Both α-amylases degraded starch and maltoheptaose, producing maltotriose, maltose, and glucose. Glucose production from starch was higher with 80-kDa α-amylase than with 59-kDa α-amylase. Kinetic analysis indicated that 74-kDa α-glucosidase prefers short α-1,4-linked oligosaccharide, whereas 86-kDa α-glucosidase prefers large α-1,6 and α-1,4-linked polysaccharides such as glycogen. When sea lettuce was used as a substrate, a 2-fold greater amount of glucose was released by treatment with 59-kDa α-amylase and 74-kDa α-glucosidase than by treatment with 45-kDa cellulase and 210-kDa β-glucosidase of A. kurodai. Unlike mammals, sea hares efficiently digest sea lettuce to glucose by a combination of two α-amylases and two α-glucosidases in the digestive fluids without membrane-bound maltase-glucoamylase and sucrase-isomaltase complexes.
| S-EPMC4141080 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The monitoring of global transcription patterns during development is a useful first step to understand mechanisms underlying growth, differentiation and patterning in a given species. However such large scale developmental studies are so far only available from a few selected model organisms such as mouse, Drosophila and the nematode C. elegans. Genomic scale information from the lophotrochozoa is now emerging. The recently characterized neuronal transcriptome of the sea hare Aplysia californica (~200’000 ESTs and ~40,000 unique non-redundant sequences representing about 55-70% of all neuronal transcripts including splice forms and non-coding RNAs) provides new insights and opportunities into problems of molluscan development and specifically neurogenesis. Regulatory genes used in development are recruited for the functions of adult nervous systems such as synaptogenesis, specific wiring in networks and structural changes underlying synaptic plasticity. While this similarity reflects a basic concept in biology, namely the recruitment of the same genes for different functions, it has never been tested on a large scale genomic level. We used representative oligo-arrays constructed from transcripts obtained from the Aplysia nervous system to explore the following two questions: 1) What neuronal genes are differentially expressed during embryonic development of the sea hare Aplysia. 2) What gene expression changes can be observed in correlation with gastrulation, metamorphosis, and larval neurogenesis. For this purpose we hybridized RNA from 3 embryonic (64 cells, gastrula, trochophore) and 4 larval stages (pre-hatching, post-hatching, pre-metamorphosis, postmetamorphosis) against a reference sample consisting of equal contributions from all stages. Our analysis revealed that all embryonic and larval stages can be distinguished based on their transcription profiles. A comparison of the Aplysia atlas with similar studies in Drosophila and mouse reveals interesting differences. We identified several new transcription factors which are differentially expressed during early embryonic development. Various other transcripts involved in metabolism and differentiation were characterized. These genes can be candidate targets for understanding neuronal growth, synaptogenesis and memory mechanisms. We conclude that the microarray technology provides us with a powerful tool for efficient survey and functional annotation of the neuronal transcriptome in Aplysia. We used a reference design for this study where we hybridized each of the 8 developmental stages of Aplysia (cleavage, gastrula, trochophore, first veliger, hatching veliger, pre-metamorphosis (stage 6), post-metamorphosis (stage 7), post-metamorphosis 60 hours (pm60)
2010-10-04 | E-GEOD-14941 | biostudies-arrayexpress
Project description:Although many endo-ß-1,4-glucanases have been isolated in invertebrates, their cellulolytic systems are not fully understood. In particular, gastropod feeding on seaweed is considered an excellent model system for production of bioethanol and renewable bioenergy from third-generation feedstocks (microalgae and seaweeds). In this study, enzymes involved in the conversion of cellulose and other polysaccharides to glucose in digestive fluids of the sea hare (Aplysia kurodai) were screened and characterized to determine how the sea hare obtains glucose from sea lettuce (Ulva pertusa). Four endo-ß-1,4-glucanases (21K, 45K, 65K, and 95K cellulase) and 2 ß-glucosidases (110K and 210K) were purified to a homogeneous state, and the synergistic action of these enzymes during cellulose digestion was analyzed. All cellulases exhibited cellulase and lichenase activities and showed distinct cleavage specificities against cellooligosaccharides and filter paper. Filter paper was digested to cellobiose, cellotriose, and cellotetraose by 21K cellulase, whereas 45K and 65K enzymes hydrolyzed the filter paper to cellobiose and glucose. 210K ß-glucosidase showed unique substrate specificity against synthetic and natural substrates, and 4-methylumbelliferyl (4MU)-ß-glucoside, 4MU-ß-galactoside, cello-oligosaccharides, laminarin, and lichenan were suitable substrates. Furthermore, 210K ß-glucosidase possesses lactase activity. Although ß-glucosidase and cellulase are necessary for efficient hydrolysis of carboxymethylcellulose to glucose, laminarin is hydrolyzed to glucose only by 210K ß-glucosidase. Kinetic analysis of the inhibition of 210K ß-glucosidase by D-glucono-1,5-lactone suggested the presence of 2 active sites similar to those of mammalian lactase-phlorizin hydrolase. Saccharification of sea lettuce was considerably stimulated by the synergistic action of 45K cellulase and 210K ß-glucosidase. Our results indicate that 45K cellulase and 210K ß-glucosidase are the core components of the sea hare digestive system for efficient production of glucose from sea lettuce. These findings contribute important new insights into the development of biofuel processing biotechnologies from seaweed.
| S-EPMC3675134 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Aplysia californica is a marine opisthobranch mollusc used as a model organism in neurobiology for cellular analyses of learning and behavior because it possesses a comparatively small number of neurons of large size. The mollusca comprise the second largest animal phylum, yet detailed genetic and genomic information is only recently beginning to accrue. Thus developmental and comparative evolutionary biology as well as biomedical research would benefit from additional information on DNA sequences of Aplysia. Therefore, we have constructed a series of unidirectional cDNA libraries from different life stages of Aplysia. These include whole organisms from the egg, veliger, metamorphic, and juvenile stages as well as adult neural tissue for reference. Individual clones were randomly picked, and high-throughput, single pass sequence analysis was performed to generate 7971 sequences. Of these, there were 5507 quality-filtered ESTs that clustered into 1988 unigenes, which are annotated and deposited into GenBank. A significant number (497) of ESTs did not match existing Aplysia ESTs and are thus potentially novel sequences for Aplysia. GO and KEGG analyses of these novel sequences indicated that a large number were involved in protein binding and translation, consistent with the predominant biosynthetic role in development and the presence of stage-specific protein isoforms.
| S-EPMC2875295 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Behavioural impairment following exposure to ocean acidification-relevant CO2 levels has been noted in a broad array of taxa. The underlying cause of these disruptions is thought to stem from alterations of ion gradients (HCO3-/Cl-) across neuronal cell membranes that occur as a consequence of maintaining pH homeostasis via the accumulation of HCO3- . While behavioural impacts are widely documented, few studies have measured acid-base parameters in species showing behavioural disruptions. In addition, current studies examining mechanisms lack resolution in targeting specific neural pathways corresponding to a given behaviour. With these considerations in mind, acid-base parameters and behaviour were measured in a model organism used for decades as a research model to study learning, the California sea hare (Aplysia californica). Aplysia exposed to elevated CO2 increased haemolymph HCO3- , achieving full and partial pH compensation at 1200 and 3000 µatm CO2, respectively. Increased CO2 did not affect self-righting behaviour. In contrast, both levels of elevated CO2 reduced the time of the tail-withdrawal reflex, suggesting a reduction in antipredator response. Overall, these results confirm that Aplysia are promising models to examine mechanisms underlying CO2-induced behavioural disruptions since they regulate HCO3- and have behaviours linked to neural networks amenable to electrophysiological testing.
| S-EPMC6837219 | biostudies-literature