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Antiplasmodial Activity Is an Ancient and Conserved Feature of Tick Defensins
Ancestral sequence reconstruction has been widely used to test evolution-based hypotheses. The genome of the European tick vector, Ixodes ricinus, encodes for defensin peptides with diverse antimicrobial activities against distantly related pathogens. These pathogens include fungi, Gram-negative, an...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5075766/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27822206 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2016.01682 |
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author | Cabezas-Cruz, Alejandro Tonk, Miray Bouchut, Anne Pierrot, Christine Pierce, Raymond J. Kotsyfakis, Michalis Rahnamaeian, Mohammad Vilcinskas, Andreas Khalife, Jamal Valdés, James J. |
author_facet | Cabezas-Cruz, Alejandro Tonk, Miray Bouchut, Anne Pierrot, Christine Pierce, Raymond J. Kotsyfakis, Michalis Rahnamaeian, Mohammad Vilcinskas, Andreas Khalife, Jamal Valdés, James J. |
author_sort | Cabezas-Cruz, Alejandro |
collection | PubMed |
description | Ancestral sequence reconstruction has been widely used to test evolution-based hypotheses. The genome of the European tick vector, Ixodes ricinus, encodes for defensin peptides with diverse antimicrobial activities against distantly related pathogens. These pathogens include fungi, Gram-negative, and Gram-positive bacteria, i.e., a wide antimicrobial spectrum. Ticks do not transmit these pathogens, suggesting that these defensins may act against a wide range of microbes encountered by ticks during blood feeding or off-host periods. As demonstrated here, these I. ricinus defensins are also effective against the apicomplexan parasite Plasmodium falciparum. To study the general evolution of antimicrobial activity in tick defensins, the ancestral amino acid sequence of chelicerate defensins, which existed approximately 444 million years ago, was reconstructed using publicly available scorpion and tick defensin sequences (named Scorpions-Ticks Defensins Ancestor, STiDA). The activity of STiDA was tested against P. falciparum and the same Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria that were used for the I. ricinus defensins. While some extant tick defensins exhibit a wide antimicrobial spectrum, the ancestral defensin showed moderate activity against one of the tested microbes, P. falciparum. This study suggests that amino acid variability and defensin family expansion increased the antimicrobial spectrum of ancestral tick defensins. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5075766 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-50757662016-11-07 Antiplasmodial Activity Is an Ancient and Conserved Feature of Tick Defensins Cabezas-Cruz, Alejandro Tonk, Miray Bouchut, Anne Pierrot, Christine Pierce, Raymond J. Kotsyfakis, Michalis Rahnamaeian, Mohammad Vilcinskas, Andreas Khalife, Jamal Valdés, James J. Front Microbiol Microbiology Ancestral sequence reconstruction has been widely used to test evolution-based hypotheses. The genome of the European tick vector, Ixodes ricinus, encodes for defensin peptides with diverse antimicrobial activities against distantly related pathogens. These pathogens include fungi, Gram-negative, and Gram-positive bacteria, i.e., a wide antimicrobial spectrum. Ticks do not transmit these pathogens, suggesting that these defensins may act against a wide range of microbes encountered by ticks during blood feeding or off-host periods. As demonstrated here, these I. ricinus defensins are also effective against the apicomplexan parasite Plasmodium falciparum. To study the general evolution of antimicrobial activity in tick defensins, the ancestral amino acid sequence of chelicerate defensins, which existed approximately 444 million years ago, was reconstructed using publicly available scorpion and tick defensin sequences (named Scorpions-Ticks Defensins Ancestor, STiDA). The activity of STiDA was tested against P. falciparum and the same Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria that were used for the I. ricinus defensins. While some extant tick defensins exhibit a wide antimicrobial spectrum, the ancestral defensin showed moderate activity against one of the tested microbes, P. falciparum. This study suggests that amino acid variability and defensin family expansion increased the antimicrobial spectrum of ancestral tick defensins. Frontiers Media S.A. 2016-10-24 /pmc/articles/PMC5075766/ /pubmed/27822206 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2016.01682 Text en Copyright © 2016 Cabezas-Cruz, Tonk, Bouchut, Pierrot, Pierce, Kotsyfakis, Rahnamaeian, Vilcinskas, Khalife and Valdés. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Microbiology Cabezas-Cruz, Alejandro Tonk, Miray Bouchut, Anne Pierrot, Christine Pierce, Raymond J. Kotsyfakis, Michalis Rahnamaeian, Mohammad Vilcinskas, Andreas Khalife, Jamal Valdés, James J. Antiplasmodial Activity Is an Ancient and Conserved Feature of Tick Defensins |
title | Antiplasmodial Activity Is an Ancient and Conserved Feature of Tick Defensins |
title_full | Antiplasmodial Activity Is an Ancient and Conserved Feature of Tick Defensins |
title_fullStr | Antiplasmodial Activity Is an Ancient and Conserved Feature of Tick Defensins |
title_full_unstemmed | Antiplasmodial Activity Is an Ancient and Conserved Feature of Tick Defensins |
title_short | Antiplasmodial Activity Is an Ancient and Conserved Feature of Tick Defensins |
title_sort | antiplasmodial activity is an ancient and conserved feature of tick defensins |
topic | Microbiology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5075766/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27822206 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2016.01682 |
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