Life without water: expression of plant LEA genes by an anhydrobiotic arthropod.
Anhydrobiotic animals protect cellular architecture and metabolic machinery in the dry state, yet the molecular repertoire supporting this profound dehydration tolerance is not fully understood. For the desiccation-tolerant crustacean, Artemia franciscana, we report differential expression of two distinct mRNAs encoding for proteins that share sequence similarities and structural features with late-embryogenesis abundant (LEA) proteins originally discovered in plants. Bioinformatic analyses support assignment of the LEA proteins from A. franciscana to group 3. This eucoelomate species is the most highly evolved animal for which LEA gene expression has been reported. It is becoming clear that an ensemble of micromolecules and macromolecules is important for establishing the physical conditions required for cellular stabilization during drying in nature.
Hand
Steven C
SC
Division of Cellular, Developmental, and Integrative Biology, Department of Biological Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803, USA. shand@LSU.edu
Jones
Dana
D
Menze
Michael A
MA
Witt
Trudy L
TL
D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D001156:Artemia / Q000378:metabolism*; D003001:Cloning, Molecular; D019295:Computational Biology; D017931:DNA Primers; D003681:Dehydration; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010940:Plant Proteins / Q000378:metabolism*; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000378:metabolism*; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA
D017931:DNA Primers; D010940:Plant Proteins; D012333:RNA, Messenger; C066246:late embryogenesis abundant protein, plant