Dynamic expression of multiple scavenger receptor cysteine-rich genes in coelomocytes of the purple sea urchin
- Creators
- Pancer, Zeev
Abstract
Coelomocytes, the heterogeneous population of sea urchin putative immune cells, were found to express a complex set of transcripts featuring scavenger receptor cysteine-rich (SRCR) repeats. SRCR domains define a metazoan superfamily of proteins, many of which are implicated in development and regulation of the immune system of vertebrates. Coelomocytes transcribe multiple SRCR genes from among a multigene family encoding an estimated number of 1,200 SRCR domains in specific patterns particular to each individual. Transcription levels for given SRCR genes may range from pronounced to undetectable, yet all tested animals harbor the genomic loci encoding these genes. Analysis of several SRCR genes revealed multiple loci corresponding to each type. In the case of one SRCR type, a cluster of at least three genes was detected within a 133-kb bacterial artificial chromosome insert, and conserved as well as unique regions were identified in sequences of three genomic clones derived from a single animal. Array hybridizations with repeated samples of coelomocyte messages revealed substantial alterations in levels of expression of many SRCR genes, with fluctuations of up to 10-fold in 1 week and up to 30-fold over a period of 3 months. This report is the first demonstration of genomic and transcriptional complexity in molecules expressed by invertebrate coelomocytes. The mechanisms controlling SRCR gene expression and the functional significance of this dynamic system await elucidation.
Additional Information
© 2000 National Academy of Sciences. Edited by Irving L. Weissman, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, and approved September 21, 2000 (received for review March 6, 2000). Published ahead of print November 7, 2000. Special gratitude is expressed to Prof. Eric H. Davidson for encouragement and supervision throughout this project. I am grateful to my colleagues here at California Institute of Technology, Profs. Jose Alberola- Ila and Ellen Rothenberg and Drs. Mark P. Boldin, Alexander Hoffmann, Carlos Lois, Jonathan P. Rast, Luk Van Parijs, and Xiao- Feng Qin, for advice and discussion of this manuscript. Dr. Andrew R. Cameron kindly supplied data from the genome project sequence database. Miki Yun provided invaluable assistance in the analysis of the many previously unidentified clones described in this work, and Patrick Leahy was of enormous assistance in handling the sea urchins and in collection of samples for all these experiments. The research was supported by Human Frontier Science Program Organization Grant RG-333/96; Z.P. was supported by National Institutes of Health Training Grant HD-07257. The publication costs of this article were defrayed in part by page charge payment. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 U.S.C. §1734 solely to indicate this fact.Attached Files
Published - PNAS-2000-Pancer-13156-61.pdf
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Additional details
- PMCID
- PMC27194
- Eprint ID
- 51976
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20141119-142811962
- RG-333/96
- Human Frontier Science Program
- HD-07257
- NIH
- Created
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2014-11-19Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field