In:
PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science (PLoS), Vol. 18, No. 2 ( 2023-2-3), p. e0270965-
Abstract:
With the ease of gene sequencing and the technology available to study and manipulate non-model organisms, the extension of the methodological toolbox required to translate our understanding of model organisms to non-model organisms has become an urgent problem. For example, mining of large coral and their symbiont sequence data is a challenge, but also provides an opportunity for understanding functionality and evolution of these and other non-model organisms. Much more information than for any other eukaryotic species is available for humans, especially related to signal transduction and diseases. However, the coral cnidarian host and human have diverged over 700 million years ago and homologies between proteins in the two species are therefore often in the gray zone, or at least often undetectable with traditional BLAST searches. We introduce a two-stage approach to identifying putative coral homologues of human proteins. First, through remote homology detection using Hidden Markov Models, we identify candidate human homologues in the cnidarian genome. However, for many proteins, the human genome alone contains multiple family members with similar or even more divergence in sequence. In the second stage, therefore, we filter the remote homology results based on the functional and structural plausibility of each coral candidate, shortlisting the coral proteins likely to have conserved some of the functions of the human proteins. We demonstrate our approach with a pipeline for mapping membrane receptors in humans to membrane receptors in corals, with specific focus on the stony coral, P . damicornis . More than 1000 human membrane receptors mapped to 335 coral receptors, including 151 G protein coupled receptors (GPCRs). To validate specific sub-families, we chose opsin proteins, representative GPCRs that confer light sensitivity, and Toll-like receptors, representative non-GPCRs, which function in the immune response, and their ability to communicate with microorganisms. Through detailed structure-function analysis of their ligand-binding pockets and downstream signaling cascades, we selected those candidate remote homologues likely to carry out related functions in the corals. This pipeline may prove generally useful for other non-model organisms, such as to support the growing field of synthetic biology.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
1932-6203
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.g001
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.g002
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.g003
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.g004
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.g005
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.g006
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.g007
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.g008
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.t001
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.s001
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.s002
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.s003
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.s004
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.s005
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.s006
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.s007
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.s008
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.s009
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.s010
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.r001
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.r002
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.r003
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0270965.r004
Language:
English
Publisher:
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Publication Date:
2023
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2267670-3
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