Department of Biochemistry, Federal University of Sao Paulo (UNIFESP), SP, Brazil.
Center of Biotechnology, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), RS, Brazil.
Sci Rep. 2019 Jan 24;9(1):435. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-36849-4.
The characterization of Rhipicephalus microplus tick physiology can support efforts to develop and improve the efficiency of control methods. A sequence containing a domain with similarity to one derived from the aspartic peptidase family was isolated from the midgut of engorged female R. microplus. The lack of the second catalytic aspartic acid residue suggest that it may be a pseudo-aspartic peptidase, and it was named RmPAP. In this work we confirm the lack of proteolytic activity of RmPAP and investigate it's non-proteolytic interaction with bovine hemoglobin by Surface Plasmon Resonance and phage display. Moreover we carried out RNAi interference and artificial feeding of ticks with anti-RmPAP antibodies to assess it's possible biological role, although no changes were observed in the biological parameters evaluated. Overall, we hypothesize that RmPAP may act as a carrier of hemoglobin/heme between the tick midgut and the ovaries.
对硬蜱生理特性的描述可以支持开发和改进控制方法的效率。从饱血雌性 R. microplus 的中肠中分离到一个包含与天冬氨酸肽酶家族衍生的结构域相似的序列。缺乏第二个催化天冬氨酸残基表明它可能是一种假天冬氨酸肽酶，并将其命名为 RmPAP。在这项工作中，我们证实了 RmPAP 缺乏蛋白水解活性，并通过表面等离子体共振和噬菌体展示研究了它与牛血红蛋白的非蛋白水解相互作用。此外，我们进行了 RNAi 干扰和用抗 RmPAP 抗体人工喂养蜱，以评估其可能的生物学作用，尽管在评估的生物学参数中没有观察到变化。总的来说，我们假设 RmPAP 可能在蜱的中肠和卵巢之间作为血红蛋白/血红素的载体。
