Förster Frank, Liang Chunguang, Shkumatov Alexander, Beisser Daniela, Engelmann Julia C, Schnölzer Martina, Frohme Marcus, Müller Tobias, Schill Ralph O, Dandekar Thomas
Dept of Bioinformatics, Biocenter University of Würzburg, 97074 Würzburg, Germany.
BMC Genomics. 2009 Oct 12;10:469. doi: 10.1186/1471-2164-10-469.
Tardigrades represent an animal phylum with extraordinary resistance to environmental stress.
To gain insights into their stress-specific adaptation potential, major clusters of related and similar proteins are identified, as well as specific functional clusters delineated comparing all tardigrades and individual species (Milnesium tardigradum, Hypsibius dujardini, Echiniscus testudo, Tulinus stephaniae, Richtersius coronifer) and functional elements in tardigrade mRNAs are analysed. We find that 39.3% of the total sequences clustered in 58 clusters of more than 20 proteins. Among these are ten tardigrade specific as well as a number of stress-specific protein clusters. Tardigrade-specific functional adaptations include strong protein, DNA- and redox protection, maintenance and protein recycling. Specific regulatory elements regulate tardigrade mRNA stability such as lox P DICE elements whereas 14 other RNA elements of higher eukaryotes are not found. Further features of tardigrade specific adaption are rapidly identified by sequence and/or pattern search on the web-tool tardigrade analyzer http://waterbear.bioapps.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de. The work-bench offers nucleotide pattern analysis for promotor and regulatory element detection (tardigrade specific; nrdb) as well as rapid COG search for function assignments including species-specific repositories of all analysed data.
Different protein clusters and regulatory elements implicated in tardigrade stress adaptations are analysed including unpublished tardigrade sequences.
缓步动物是一个对环境压力具有非凡抵抗力的动物门。
为深入了解它们针对压力的特定适应潜力，我们鉴定了主要的相关和相似蛋白质簇，划定了特定的功能簇，比较了所有缓步动物和单个物种（米尔尼斯缓步虫、杜氏高生熊虫、龟形棘影熊虫、斯蒂芬妮土列熊虫、冠状富氏熊虫），并分析了缓步动物mRNA中的功能元件。我们发现，39.3%的总序列聚集在58个由20多种蛋白质组成的簇中。其中有10个缓步动物特异性以及一些压力特异性蛋白质簇。缓步动物特异性功能适应包括强大的蛋白质、DNA和氧化还原保护、维持和蛋白质循环利用。特定的调控元件调节缓步动物mRNA的稳定性，如lox P DICE元件，而未发现高等真核生物的其他14种RNA元件。通过在网络工具缓步动物分析器http://waterbear.bioapps.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de上进行序列和/或模式搜索，可快速识别缓步动物特异性适应的其他特征。该工作台提供用于启动子和调控元件检测的核苷酸模式分析（缓步动物特异性；nrdb）以及用于功能分配的快速COG搜索，包括所有分析数据的物种特异性存储库。
分析了参与缓步动物压力适应的不同蛋白质簇和调控元件，包括未发表的缓步动物序列。
