title: Gene discovery, comparative analysis and expression profile reveal the complexity of the Crassostrea gigas apoptosis system.
abstract: Apoptosis system was reported to play important role in organism immunity, but it was a currently understudied respect in molluscan immunity studies. Base on the recent generation of ESTs in the pacific oyster, Crassostrea gigas, a survey of apoptosis-related molecules was conducted in the assembled unigenes, we found that the basic genes and domains in apoptosis-associated proteins were conserved, the overall apoptotic machinery was complex in C. gigas and that the organism had an expanded number of putative baculovirus inhibitor of apoptosis repeat domains. Moreover, four typical apoptosis-related genes were cloned in C. gigas and compared with the sequences of these genes in Drosophila melanogaster and Homo sapiens. The expression level of these four apoptosis-related genes in the hemolymph increased dramatically in the presence of the bacteria, Vibrio anguillarum, indicating their role in bacterial defense. Our results suggest that the oyster apoptosis system is not simple and cannot be represented by model invertebrates.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 7 Nanhai Rd., Qingdao 266071, China.
authors.forename: Linlin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Guofan
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D017209:Apoptosis; D020169:Caspases / Q000235:genetics; D049896:Crassostrea / Q000166:cytology* / Q000235:genetics* / Q000382:microbiology; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D053200:Fas-Associated Death Domain Protein / Q000235:genetics; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D006801:Humans; D051034:Inhibitor of Apoptosis Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D058977:Molecular Sequence Annotation; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009928:Organ Specificity; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D014733:Vibrio
chemical_list: D053200:Fas-Associated Death Domain Protein; D051034:Inhibitor of Apoptosis Proteins; D020169:Caspases