Dai Zhenkai, Asgari Sassan
Australian Infectious Disease Research Centre, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Insect Mol Biol. 2023 Oct;32(5):461-468. doi: 10.1111/imb.12843. Epub 2023 Apr 29.
The N -methyladenosine (m A) machinery functions through three groups of proteins in eukaryotic cells, including m A writers, erasers and readers. The m A cellular machinery has mostly been characterised in mammalian species, and the relevant literature on insects is currently scant. While homologues of m A writers and readers have been reported from insects, no erasers have been described so far. Here, using BLAST search, we searched for potential erasers in insects. While we found homologues of human m A eraser ALKBH5 in termites, beetles and true bugs, they could not be found in representative dipteran and lepidopteran species. However, a potential m A eraser, ALKBH8, was identified and experimentally investigated. Our results showed that ALKBH8 can reduce the m A levels of Aedes aegypti and Drosophila melanogaster RNAs, suggesting that AeALKBH8 could be a candidate m A eraser in insects.
N -甲基腺苷（m⁶A）机制通过真核细胞中的三类蛋白质发挥作用，包括m⁶A写入蛋白、擦除蛋白和读取蛋白。m⁶A细胞机制大多已在哺乳动物物种中得到表征，而目前关于昆虫的相关文献较少。虽然已报道了昆虫中m⁶A写入蛋白和读取蛋白的同源物，但迄今为止尚未描述擦除蛋白。在此，我们利用BLAST搜索在昆虫中寻找潜在的擦除蛋白。虽然我们在白蚁、甲虫和半翅目昆虫中发现了人类m⁶A擦除蛋白ALKBH5的同源物，但在代表性的双翅目和鳞翅目物种中未发现。然而，我们鉴定并实验研究了一种潜在的m⁶A擦除蛋白ALKBH8。我们的结果表明，ALKBH8可以降低埃及伊蚊和黑腹果蝇RNA的m⁶A水平，这表明埃及伊蚊ALKBH8可能是昆虫中的一种m⁶A擦除蛋白候选物。
