Environmental Biophysics and Molecular Biology Program, Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 71 Dudley Rd, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA.
Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, 595 Charles E. Young Drive East, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
J R Soc Interface. 2021 Feb;18(175):20200859. doi: 10.1098/rsif.2020.0859. Epub 2021 Feb 24.
Coral skeletons are materials composed of inorganic aragonitic fibres and organic molecules including proteins, sugars and lipids that are highly organized to form a solid biomaterial upon which the animals live. The skeleton contains tens of proteins, all of which are encoded in the animal genome and secreted during the biomineralization process. While recent advances are revealing the functions and evolutionary history of some of these proteins, how they are spatially arranged in the skeleton is unknown. Using a combination of chemical cross-linking and high-resolution tandem mass spectrometry, we identify, for the first time, the spatial interactions of the proteins embedded within the skeleton of the stony coral . Our subsequent network analysis revealed that several coral acid-rich proteins are invariably associated with carbonic anhydrase(s), alpha-collagen, cadherins and other calcium-binding proteins. These spatial arrangements clearly show that protein-protein interactions in coral skeletons are highly coordinated and are key to understanding the formation and persistence of coral skeletons through time.
珊瑚骨骼是由无机方解石纤维和有机分子组成的材料，包括蛋白质、糖和脂质，这些分子高度组织化，在动物生活的地方形成固体生物材料。骨骼中含有数十种蛋白质，它们都由动物基因组编码，并在生物矿化过程中分泌。虽然最近的进展揭示了其中一些蛋白质的功能和进化历史，但它们在骨骼中的空间排列方式尚不清楚。我们首次使用化学交联和高分辨率串联质谱的组合，鉴定了硬珊瑚骨骼中嵌入的蛋白质的空间相互作用。我们随后的网络分析表明，几种富含珊瑚酸的蛋白质与碳酸酐酶（s）、α-胶原蛋白、钙粘蛋白和其他钙结合蛋白始终相关。这些空间排列清楚地表明，珊瑚骨骼中的蛋白质-蛋白质相互作用高度协调，是理解珊瑚骨骼形成和持久存在的关键。
