Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-16-2019
Publication Source
PLOS One
Abstract
Notophthalmus viridescens (Red-spotted Newt) possess amazing capabilities to regenerate their organs and other tissues. Previously, using a de novo assembly of the newt transcriptome combined with proteomic validation, our group identified a novel family of five protein members expressed in adult tissues during regeneration in Notophthalmus viridescens. The presence of a putative signal peptide suggests that all these proteins are secretory in nature. Here we employed iterative threading assembly refinement (I-TASSER) server to generate three-dimensional structure of these novel Newt proteins and predicted their function. Our data suggests that these proteins could act as ion transporters, and be involved in redox reaction(s). Due to absence of transgenic approaches in N. viridescens, and conservation of genetic machinery across species, we generated transgenic Drosophila melanogaster to misexpress these genes. Expression of 2775 transcripts were compared between these five newly identified Newt genes. We found that genes involved in the developmental process, cell cycle, apoptosis, and immune response are among those that are highly enriched. To validate the RNA Seq. data, expression of six highly regulated genes were verified using real time Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-qPCR). These graded gene expression patterns provide insight into the function of novel protein family identified in Newt, and layout a map for future studies in the field.
ISBN/ISSN
1932-6203
Document Version
Published Version
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 Mehta et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Publisher
PLOS
Volume
14
Peer Reviewed
yes
Issue
8
eCommons Citation
Mehta AS, Luz-Madrigal A, Li J-L, Tsonis PA, Singh A (2019) Comparative transcriptomic analysis and structure prediction of novel Newt proteins. PLoS ONE 14(8): e0220416. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220416
Included in
Biology Commons, Biotechnology Commons, Cell Biology Commons, Genetics Commons, Microbiology Commons, Molecular Genetics Commons
Comments
This work was supported by NIH (1R15GM124654-01) to Dr. Amit Singh and NIH (RO1EY10540) to Dr. Panagiotis A Tsonis. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.