Abstract
Ovothiols are π-methyl-5-thiohistidines produced in great amounts in sea urchin eggs, where they can act as protective agents against the oxidative burst at fertilization and environmental stressors during development. Here we examined the biological relevance of ovothiol during the embryogenesis of the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus by assessing the localization of the key biosynthetic enzyme OvoA, both at transcript and protein level, and perturbing its protein translation by morpholino antisense oligonucleotide-mediated knockdown experiments. In addition, we explored the possible involvement of ovothiol in the inflammatory response by assessing ovoA gene expression and protein localization following exposure to bacterial lipopolysaccharide. The results of the present study suggest that ovothiol may be a key regulator of cell proliferation in early developing embryos. Moreover, the localization of OvoA in key larval cells and tissues, in control and inflammatory conditions, suggests that ovothiol may ensure larval skeleton formation and mediate inflammatory processes triggered by bacterial infection. This work significantly contributes to the understanding of the biological function of ovothiols in marine organisms, and may provide new inspiration for the identification of the biological activities of ovothiols in humans, considering the pharmacological potential of these molecules.
Highlights
Embryonic development represents an extremely sensitive and delicate stage of life for all living organisms, especially for those with external fertilization, such as sea urchins
The experiments performed in gastrula and prism stages showed an ovoA diffuse expression in all cells, the signal appeared stronger in the archenteron region
In the plutei larvae ovoA mRNA was expressed in all the larva, a stronger signal was detected in the gut and 5 mesenchyme cells identifiable for their position as skeletogenic cells
Summary
Embryonic development represents an extremely sensitive and delicate stage of life for all living organisms, especially for those with external fertilization, such as sea urchins. In the marine ecosystem, sea urchin adults and embryos are constantly exposed to a variety of environmental pressures, including both intrinsic and extrinsic/anthropogenic factors causing oxidative and nitrosative stress [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. They have acquired the ability, to some extent, to maintain homeostasis in an adverse environment, through the evolution of a ‘chemical defensome’, an integrated network of gene families and pathways, involved in the protection and repair from damage [8]. Eggs accumulate, during oogenesis, some antioxidant natural molecules, like tocopherols, ascorbic acid, carotenoids, glutathione and ovothiol [10,11,12,13,14,15]
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