title: Transcriptome analysis in tardigrade species reveals specific molecular pathways for stress adaptations.
abstract: Tardigrades have unique stress-adaptations that allow them to survive extremes of cold, heat, radiation and vacuum. To study this, encoded protein clusters and pathways from an ongoing transcriptome study on the tardigrade Milnesium tardigradum were analyzed using bioinformatics tools and compared to expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from Hypsibius dujardini, revealing major pathways involved in resistance against extreme environmental conditions. ESTs are available on the Tardigrade Workbench along with software and databank updates. Our analysis reveals that RNA stability motifs for M. tardigradum are different from typical motifs known from higher animals. M. tardigradum and H. dujardini protein clusters and conserved domains imply metabolic storage pathways for glycogen, glycolipids and specific secondary metabolism as well as stress response pathways (including heat shock proteins, bmh2, and specific repair pathways). Redox-, DNA-, stress- and protein protection pathways complement specific repair capabilities to achieve the strong robustness of M. tardigradum. These pathways are partly conserved in other animals and their manipulation could boost stress adaptation even in human cells. However, the unique combination of resistance and repair pathways make tardigrades and M. tardigradum in particular so highly stress resistant.
authors.affiliation: Dept. of Bioinformatics, Biocenter University of Würzburg, 97074 Würzburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Förster
authors.forename: Daniela
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Beisser
authors.forename: Markus A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Grohme
authors.forename: Chunguang
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.forename: Brahim
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Mali
authors.forename: Alexander Matthias
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Siegl
authors.forename: Julia C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Engelmann
authors.forename: Alexander V
authors.initials: AV
authors.lastname: Shkumatov
authors.forename: Elham
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Schokraie
authors.forename: Tobias
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Müller
authors.forename: Martina
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Schnölzer
authors.forename: Ralph O
authors.initials: RO
authors.lastname: Schill
authors.forename: Marcus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Frohme
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Dandekar