Luciferase of the Japanese syllid polychaete Odontosyllis umdecimdonta

Darrin T Schultz,Alexey A Kotlobay,Rustam Ziganshin,Artyom Bannikov,Nadezhda M Markina,Tatiana V Chepurnyh,Ekaterina S Shakhova,Ksenia Palkina,Steven H.D Haddock,Ilia V Yampolsky,Yuichi Oba

doi:10.1016/j.bbrc.2018.05.135

Abstract

Odontosyllis undecimdonta is a marine syllid polychaete that produces bright internal and exuded bioluminescence. Despite over fifty years of biochemical investigation into Odontosyllis bioluminescence, the light-emitting small molecule substrate and catalyzing luciferase protein have remained a mystery. Here we describe the discovery of a bioluminescent protein fraction from O. undecimdonta, the identification of the luciferase using peptide and RNA sequencing, and the in vitro reconstruction of the bioluminescence reaction using highly purified O. undecimdonta luciferin and recombinant luciferase. Lastly, we found no identifiably homologous proteins in publicly available datasets. This suggests that the syllid polychaetes contain an evolutionarily unique luciferase among all characterized luminous taxa.

Highlights

Odontosyllis is a widely distributed genus of marine syllid polychaete worms that are noted for their striking bioluminescent courtship displays [1,2,3,4,5]
Previous studies of the Odontosyllis bioluminescence system generated conflicting results regarding whether the system is a soluble oxygen-dependent luciferin-luciferase reaction [8,9], or is a photoprotein system in which the light-emitting small molecule substrate is covalently bound to the enzyme [11]
We verified the identity of the Odontosyllis luciferase gene by showing that recombinant protein and purified luciferin in cell-lysate is luminous, in which the luminescence spectra matches that of the Odontosyllis in vivo luminescence

Summary

Introduction

Odontosyllis is a widely distributed genus of marine syllid polychaete worms that are noted for their striking bioluminescent courtship displays [1,2,3,4,5]. To date the enzyme sequences and luciferin structures remain a mystery for all polychaete species in the thirteen families containing luminous species [12]. The above studies used a different Odontosyllis species, and the different colors of aqueous extracts identified from those species make it unclear whether there are multiple bioluminescent chemistries within Odontosyllis. Both species have the same behavior of secreting luminescence during mating [1,4], so both species presumably share a homologous bioluminescent system

Methods

Results

Conclusion