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Genome‐wide search for leech antiplatelet proteins in the non‐blood‐feeding leech H elobdella robusta ( R hyncobdellida: G lossiphoniidae) reveals evidence of secreted anticoagulants
Author(s) -
Kvist Sebastian,
Sarkar Indra Neil,
Siddall Mark E.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
invertebrate biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.486
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1744-7410
pISSN - 1077-8306
DOI - 10.1111/j.1744-7410.2011.00238.x
Subject(s) - leech , biology , genome , evolutionary biology , computational biology , gene , genetics , world wide web , computer science
The genome of the non‐blood‐feeding glossiphoniid leech H elobdella robusta was screened for leech antiplatelet protein ( LAPP ), an anticoagulant that specifically inhibits collagen‐stimulated platelet aggregation. Previously identified LAPP sequences from H aementeria officinalis were used as queries against the predicted genes in the genome, employing a variety of BLAST protocols. Matches were reciprocally BLAST ed against GenBank databases as a cross‐validation of the predicted annotations of the genes. A total of eight loci, positioned as a tandem array, were recovered with significantly low e‐values; these showed high sequence similarity (32.49% average sequence similarity of shared amino acid positions) to the known anticoagulants. Moreover, six of these possessed a predicted signal‐peptide toward the N‐terminus, indicating their secretion by the leech. All eight loci, together with known LAPP sequences from H a. officinalis , as well as several sequences from publicly available expressed sequence tag libraries of H a. depressa and H e. robusta , were aligned and subjected to phylogenetic analysis. The resulting tree showed a monophyletic clade consisting of the H e. robusta loci, which was sister to a clade comprised of H aementeria ‐derived sequences. To corroborate the evolution of the anticoagulants with the evolution of leeches more generally, the topology of the LAPP ‐tree was compared to that of a previously published leech phylogeny; these showed compatible topologies with respect to the included genera. These results corroborate recent phylogenetic work, which suggests that this non‐blood‐feeding leech has a hematophagous ancestry.