School of Biotechnology, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, China.
Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Institute of Sericulture, Zhenjiang, China.
PeerJ. 2022 Jul 8;10:e13530. doi: 10.7717/peerj.13530. eCollection 2022.
Microsporidia are obligate intracellular parasites that can infect a wide range of vertebrates and invertebrates including humans and insects, such as silkworm and bees. The microsporidium can cause pebrine in , which is the most destructive disease in the sericulture industry. Although membrane proteins are involved in a wide range of cellular functions and part of many important metabolic pathways, there are rare reports about the membrane proteins of microsporidia up to now. We screened a putative membrane protein Ycf 1 from the midgut transcriptome of the -infected silkworm. Gene cloning and bioinformatics analysis showed that the gene contains a complete open reading frame (ORF) of 969 bp in length encoding a 322 amino acid polypeptide that has one signal peptide and one transmembrane domain. Indirect immunofluorescence results showed that Ycf 1 protein is distributed on the plasma membrane. Expression pattern analysis showed that the gene expressed in all developmental stages of . Knockdown of the gene by RNAi effectively inhibited the proliferation of . These results indicated that Ycf 1 is a membrane protein and plays an important role in the life cycle of .
微孢子虫是一种专性细胞内寄生虫，可以感染包括人类和昆虫在内的广泛的脊椎动物和无脊椎动物，如蚕和蜜蜂。微孢子虫可引起蚕业生产中最具破坏性的疾病——微粒子病。尽管膜蛋白参与了广泛的细胞功能，并且是许多重要代谢途径的一部分，但到目前为止，关于微孢子虫的膜蛋白的报道很少。我们从感染的家蚕中肠转录组中筛选出一种假定的膜蛋白 Ycf1。基因克隆和生物信息学分析表明，该基因包含一个完整的开放阅读框（ORF），长 969bp，编码一个 322 个氨基酸的多肽，具有一个信号肽和一个跨膜结构域。间接免疫荧光结果表明 Ycf1 蛋白分布在质膜上。表达模式分析表明，该基因在家蚕的所有发育阶段都有表达。通过 RNAi 敲低该基因有效地抑制了的增殖。这些结果表明 Ycf1 是一种膜蛋白，在的生命周期中发挥重要作用。
