Abstract
Oxylipins are well-established lipid mediators in plants and animals. In mammals, arachidonic acid (AA)-derived eicosanoids control inflammation, fever, blood coagulation, pain perception and labor, and, accordingly, are used as drugs, while lipoxygenases (LOX), as well as cyclooxygenases (COX) serve as therapeutic targets for drug development. In soft corals, eicosanoids are synthesized on demand from AA by LOX, COX, and catalase-related allene oxide synthase-lipoxygenase (cAOS-LOX) and hydroperoxide lyase-lipoxygenase (cHPL-LOX) fusion proteins. Reef-building stony corals are used as model organisms for the stress-related genomic studies of corals. Yet, the eicosanoid synthesis capability and AA-derived lipid mediator profiles of stony corals have not been determined. In the current study, the genomic and transcriptomic data about stony coral LOXs, AOS-LOXs, and COXs were analyzed and the eicosanoid profiles and AA metabolites of three stony corals, Acropora millepora, A. cervicornis, and Galaxea fascicularis, were determined by reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) coupled with MS-MS and a radiometric detector. Our results confirm that the active LOX and AOS-LOX pathways are present in Acropora sp., which correspond to the genomic/sequence data reported earlier. In addition, LOX, AOS-LOX, and COX products were detected in the closely related species G. fascicularis. In conclusion, the functional 8R-LOX and/or AOS-LOX pathways are abundant among corals, while COXs are restricted to certain soft and stony coral lineages.
Highlights
Oxygenated polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), oxylipins, are well-defined stress mediators in animals and plants
The rest of the sequences were predicted to encode other proteins, which was manually confirmed by multiple sequence alignment (MSA)
The presence of endogenous eicosanoids was established in the EtOAc extracts of fresh stony coral tissue homogenates
Summary
Oxygenated polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), oxylipins, are well-defined stress mediators in animals and plants. Their formation is initiated by fatty acid dioxygenases-lipoxygenases (LOX) [1]. The metabolites of eicosanoid pathways are widely used as drugs and dioxygenases as drug targets [4]. Eicosanoids act as local hormones in auto- or paracrine manner. They control inflammatory processes, pain, fever, cancer, and neural disorders [5,6,7]. E.g., nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, including selective COX-2 inhibitors, 5-LOX and 12/15-LOX inhibitors, and leukotriene receptor antagonists [4,9,11], have been developed to reduce pain, fever, and inflammation. All together constituting dioxygenases as therapeutic targets for a continuing extensive drug development
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