title: The Distribution of Lectins across the Phylum Nematoda: A Genome-Wide Search.
abstract: Nematodes are a very diverse phylum that has adapted to nearly every ecosystem. They have developed specialized lifestyles, dividing the phylum into free-living, animal, and plant parasitic species. Their sheer abundance in numbers and presence in nearly every ecosystem make them the most prevalent animals on earth. In this research nematode-specific profiles were designed to retrieve predicted lectin-like domains from the sequence data of nematode genomes and transcriptomes. Lectins are carbohydrate-binding proteins that play numerous roles inside and outside the cell depending on their sugar specificity and associated protein domains. The sugar-binding properties of the retrieved lectin-like proteins were predicted in silico. Although most research has focused on C-type lectin-like, galectin-like, and calreticulin-like proteins in nematodes, we show that the lectin-like repertoire in nematodes is far more diverse. We focused on C-type lectins, which are abundantly present in all investigated nematode species, but seem to be far more abundant in free-living species. Although C-type lectin-like proteins are omnipresent in nematodes, we have shown that only a small part possesses the residues that are thought to be essential for carbohydrate binding. Curiously, hevein, a typical plant lectin domain not reported in animals before, was found in some nematode species.
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biotechnology, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, Coupure links 653, 9000 Ghent, Belgium. lander.bauters@ugent.be.
authors.forename: Lander
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bauters
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biotechnology, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, Coupure links 653, 9000 Ghent, Belgium. diana.naalden@ugent.be.
authors.forename: Diana
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Naalden
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biotechnology, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, Coupure links 653, 9000 Ghent, Belgium. godelieve.gheysen@ugent.be.
authors.forename: Godelieve
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Gheysen
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D023181:Antimicrobial Cationic Peptides / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D016678:Genome; D015801:Helminth Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics*; D037181:Lectins, C-Type / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics*; D009348:Nematoda / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics*; D010802:Phylogeny; D037121:Plant Lectins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D000072417:Protein Domains; D016415:Sequence Alignment
chemical_list: D023181:Antimicrobial Cationic Peptides; D015801:Helminth Proteins; D037181:Lectins, C-Type; D037121:Plant Lectins; C045875:hevein
keywords: C-type lectin; bioinformatic analysis; hevein; nematode