title: Identification and characterization of an apoptosis-stimulating protein of p53 (ASPP) gene from Branchiostoma belcheri: Insights into evolution of ASPP gene family.
abstract: The ASPP (apoptosis-stimulating protein of p53) protein family plays very key roles in apoptosis regulation, in both p53-dependent and p53-independent pathways. However, the ASPP homologous gene has not been identified in amphioxus to date. Here, we identified and characterized an ASPP gene from Branchiostoma belcheri (designed as AmphiASPP) and extensively studied its evolution and roles involved in innate immunity. The results showed that the amphioxus genome has an ASPP homolog gene with an ORF of 3285 bp, encoding 1094 amino acids which contains ANK repeats and SK3 domain. The evolutionary analyses indicated that the members of ASPP protein family might be present in a common ancestor of Nematostella vectensis and underwent positive selective in the evolutionary history. In addition, the amphioxus ASPP gene was ubiquitously and differentially expressed in five investigated tissues, and the amphioxus ASPP gene was involved in the innate immune response of LPS and LTA stimulation. Finally, bioinformatic analyses displayed that amphioxus ASPP protein could interact with REL protein by conserved binding sites compared with human ASPP2 protein, which seemed to further suggest that the amphioxus ASPP protein involve in innate immunity through NF-кB signaling pathway. Taken together, our findings provided an insight into the evolution and innate immunity function of the ASPP family.
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science, Qingdao Agricultural University, Qingdao 266109, PR China; Laboratory for Comparative Genomics and Bioinformatics, College of Life Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210046, PR China. Electronic address: mafei01@tsinghua.org.cn.
authors.forename: Xiaojun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science, Qingdao Agricultural University, Qingdao 266109, PR China.
authors.forename: Juan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Du
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science, Qingdao Agricultural University, Qingdao 266109, PR China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Comparative Genomics and Bioinformatics, College of Life Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210046, PR China.
authors.forename: Ping
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Comparative Genomics and Bioinformatics, College of Life Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210046, PR China. Electronic address: sxjwyj@163.com.
authors.forename: Fei
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ma
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D017209:Apoptosis; D051017:Apoptosis Regulatory Proteins / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D003001:Cloning, Molecular; D018076:DNA, Complementary / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D007113:Immunity, Innate; D064175:Lancelets / Q000235:genetics* / Q000276:immunology* / Q000378:metabolism; D008070:Lipopolysaccharides / Q000494:pharmacology; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009928:Organ Specificity; D010802:Phylogeny; D012313:RNA / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D016415:Sequence Alignment
chemical_list: D051017:Apoptosis Regulatory Proteins; D018076:DNA, Complementary; D008070:Lipopolysaccharides; D012313:RNA
keywords: ASPP family; Amphioxus; Innate immunity; NF-кB; p53