Chen Tianbao, Farragher Susan, Bjourson Anthony J, Orr David F, Rao Pingfan, Shaw Chris
Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Group, School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Ulster, Coleraine BT52 1SA, Northern Ireland, UK.
Biochem J. 2003 Apr 1;371(Pt 1):125-30. doi: 10.1042/BJ20021343.
Amphibian defensive skin secretions are complex, species-specific cocktails of biologically active molecules, including many uncharacterized peptides. The study of such secretions for novel peptide discovery is time-limited, as amphibians are in rapid global decline. While secretion proteome analysis is non-lethal, transcriptome analysis has until now required killing of specimens prior to skin dissection for cDNA library construction. Here we present the discovery that polyadenylated mRNAs encoding dermal granular gland peptides are present in defensive skin secretions, stabilized by endogenous nucleic acid-binding amphipathic peptides. Thus parallel secretory proteome and transcriptome analyses can be performed without killing the specimen in this model amphibian system--a finding that has important implications in conservation of biodiversity within this threatened vertebrate taxon and whose mechanistics may have broader implications in biomolecular science.
两栖动物的防御性皮肤分泌物是复杂的、具有物种特异性的生物活性分子混合物，其中包括许多未被鉴定的肽。由于两栖动物在全球范围内数量迅速减少，对这类分泌物进行新型肽发现的研究时间有限。虽然分泌蛋白质组分析是非致死性的，但迄今为止，转录组分析需要在解剖皮肤以构建cDNA文库之前杀死标本。在此，我们发现编码真皮颗粒腺肽的聚腺苷酸化mRNA存在于防御性皮肤分泌物中，并由内源性核酸结合两亲性肽稳定。因此，在这个模式两栖动物系统中，可以在不杀死标本的情况下进行平行的分泌蛋白质组和转录组分析——这一发现对保护这个受威胁的脊椎动物类群中的生物多样性具有重要意义，其作用机制可能在生物分子科学领域有更广泛的影响。
