Isolation and cloning of a C-type lectin from the hexactinellid sponge Aphrocallistes vastus: a putative aggregation factor.

Among the sponges (Porifera), the oldest group of metazoans in phylogenetic terms, the Hexactinellida is considered to have diverged earliest from the two other sponge classes, the Demospongiae and Calcarea. The Hexactinellida are unusual among all Metazoa in possessing mostly syncytial rather than cellular tissues. Here we describe the purification of a cell adhesion molecule with a size of 34 kDa (in its native form; 24 kDa after deglycosylation) from the hexactinellid sponge Aphrocallistes vastus. This adhesion molecule was previously found to agglutinate preserved cells and membranes in a non-species-specific manner (Müller, W. E. G., Zahn, R. K, Conrad, J., Kurelec, B., and Uhlenbruck, G. [1984] Cell adhesion molecules in the haxactinellid Aphrocallistes vastus: species-unspecific aggregationfactor. Differentiation, 26, 30--35). The fact that the aggregation process required Ca(2+) and was inhibited by bird's nest glycoprotein and D-galactose but not by D-mannose or N-acetyl-D-galactosamine suggests that this cell adhesion molecule is a C-type lectin. To test this assumption, two highly similar C-type lectins were cloned from A.vastus. The deduced polypeptides of the two cDNA species isolated classified these molecules as C-type lectins. The calculated M(r) of the 191 aa long sequences were 22,022 and 22,064, respectively. The C-type lectins showed highest similarity to C-type lectins (type-II membrane proteins) from higher metazoan phyla; these molecules are absent in non-Metazoa. The two sponge C-type lectins contain the conserved domains known from other C-type lectins (e.g., disulfide bonds, the amino acids known to be involved in Ca(2+)-binding, as well as the amino acids involved in the specificity of binding to D-galactose) and a hydrophobic N-terminal region. The N-terminal part of the purified C-type lectin was identical with the corresponding region of the deduced polypeptide from the cDNA. It is proposed that the A.vastus lectins might bind to the cell membrane by their hydrophobic segment and might interact with carbohydrate units on the surface of the other cells/syncytia.