Functional equivalence of germ plasm organizers.
PLoS Genet
; 14(11): e1007696, 2018 11.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-30399145
ABSTRACT
The proteins Oskar (Osk) in Drosophila and Bucky ball (Buc) in zebrafish act as germ plasm organizers. Both proteins recapitulate germ plasm activities but seem to be unique to their animal groups. Here, we discover that Osk and Buc show similar activities during germ cell specification. Drosophila Osk induces additional PGCs in zebrafish. Surprisingly, Osk and Buc do not show homologous protein motifs that would explain their related function. Nonetheless, we detect that both proteins contain stretches of intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs), which seem to be involved in protein aggregation. IDRs are known to rapidly change their sequence during evolution, which might obscure biochemical interaction motifs. Indeed, we show that Buc binds to the known Oskar interactors Vasa protein and nanos mRNA indicating conserved biochemical activities. These data provide a molecular framework for two proteins with unrelated sequence but with equivalent function to assemble a conserved core-complex nucleating germ plasm.
Texto completo:
1
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Células Germinativas
Idioma:
En
Ano de publicação:
2018
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Alemanha