Thioester-containing proteins (TEPs) superfamily is known to play important innate immune functions in a wide range of animal phyla. TEPs are involved in recognition, and in the direct or mediated killing of several invading organisms or pathogens. While several TEPs have been identified in many invertebrates, only one TEP (named BgTEP) has been previously characterized in the freshwater snail, Biomphalaria glabrata. As the presence of a single member of that family is particularly intriguing, transcriptomic data and the recently published genome were used to explore the presence of other BgTEP related genes in B. glabrata. Ten other TEP members have been reported and classified into different subfamilies: Three complement-like factors (BgC3-1 to BgC3-3), one α-2-macroblobulin (BgA2M), two macroglobulin complement-related proteins (BgMCR1, BgMCR2), one CD109 (BgCD109), and three insect TEP (BgTEP2 to BgTEP4) in addition to the previously characterized BgTEP that we renamed BgTEP1. This is the first report on such a level of TEP diversity and of the presence of macroglobulin complement-related proteins (MCR) in mollusks. Gene structure analysis revealed alternative splicing in the highly variable region of three members (BgA2M, BgCD109, and BgTEP2) with a particularly unexpected diversity for BgTEP2. Finally, different gene expression profiles tend to indicate specific functions for such novel family members.
Summary. NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectroscopy was used to identify metabolic solutes in one normal and two habituated sugarbeet cell lines (Beta vulgar& L. altissirna) obtained from the same mother strain. This technique was applied to investigate the intracellular naturally occurring 13C isotopes (1.1% of total natural carbon) in living sugarbeet suspension cells and perchloric cell extracts. A combination of IH, ~3C, double-quantum filter correlation spectroscopy, heterouuclear multiple-bond correlation, and heteronuclear multiple-quantum coherence spectra from perchloric cell extracts enabled us to identify the main compounds in the different extract solutions. This was verified by spiking the solutions with small amounts of reference compounds to exclude the influence exerted by pH on the chemical shifts of the different compounds in the 1H and 13C spectra. The comparison of the three sugarbeet cell lines' NMR spectra showed the presence of sucrose, glucose, and fructose in the three strains. On the other hand, it revealed a strong discrepancy between metabolic solutes. Spectra from the habituated lines showed the presence of glutamine. Some amino acids such as alanine or valine, and unidentified signals corresponding to aromatic rings were only characterized in the habituated nonorganogenic cells. On the basis of these ~3C NMR data we assumed that the discrepancy between the different sugarbeet cell lines could be due to an increase in the metabolic activity of the habituated cell lines in relation to their autonomous growth.
The freshwater snail Biomphalaria glabrata is an intermediate host of Schistosoma mansoni, the agent of human intestinal schistosomiasis. However, much is to be discovered about its innate immune system that appears as a complex black box, in which the immune cells (called hemocytes) play a major role in both cellular and humoral response towards pathogens. Until now, hemocyte classification has been based exclusively on cell morphology and ultrastructural description and depending on the authors considered from 2 to 5 hemocyte populations have been described. In this study, we proposed to evaluate the hemocyte heterogeneity at the transcriptomic level. To accomplish this objective, we used single cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq) technology coupled to a droplet-based system to separate hemocytes and analyze their transcriptome at a unique cell level in naive Biomphalaria glabrata snails. We were able to demonstrate the presence of 7 hemocyte transcriptomic populations defined by the expression of specific marker genes. As a result, scRNAseq approach showed a high heterogeneity within hemocytes, but provides a detailed description of the different hemocyte transcriptomic populations in B. glabrata supported by distinct cellular functions and lineage trajectory. As a main result, scRNAseq revealed the 3 main population as a super-group of hemocyte diversity but, on the contrary, a great hemocytes plasticity with a probable capacity of hemocytes to engage to different activation pathways. This work opens a new field of research to understand the role of hemocytes particularly in response to pathogens, and towards S. mansoni parasites.
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