Cloning and characterization of allograft inflammatory factor-1 (AIF-1) from manila clam Venerupis philippinarum

Homolog of allograft inflammatory factor-1 induces macrophage migration during innate immune response in leech

“…Moreover, morphological analysis showed that macrophage recruitment induced by rHmAIF-1 was higher in the first 48 h after injection and decreased starting from 72 h to 7 days after treatment. These data are in accordance with the reports from vertebrates in which AIF-1 is involved in macrophage activation at early stages, rather than at late stages of the inflammatory process (Autieri et al 2000;Deininger et al 2000Deininger et al , 2002Zhang et al 2011). In particular, at 24 h after rHmAIF-1 injection, a high immunoreactive signal was detected in the cytoplasm of migrating cells, most of which were CD68 + .…”

“…Subsequently, AIF-1-like factors sharing a well-preserved amino-acid sequence and functional role have been described in other groups of metazoans. Data in the literature have indeed shown that AIF-1 expression increases significantly after transplantation, wound healing or bacterial infections, both in vertebrate and in invertebrate species (Utans et al 1995;Kruse et al 1999;Watano et al 2001;de Zoysa et al 2010;Zhang et al 2011) suggesting that this factor is involved in the inflammatory response and in immune system regulation. Despite extensive investigation focused on both the molecular characteristics and the expression level of AIF-1 during the inflammatory response or wound healing, the physiological role of this protein in the regulation of the immune system remains unclear.…”

AIF-1 and RNASET2 Play Complementary Roles in the Innate Immune Response of Medicinal Leech

“…The allograft factor 1 (AIF-1) protein, a novel cytokine-like molecule involved in immunocyte recruitment into injured/grafted or infected tissues both in vertebrates [6, 7, 43] and invertebrates [8-10, 44], has recently been characterized in leech by our research group. Indeed, a gene showing high similarity with vertebrates’ AIF-1, named Hm Iba1/alias Hm AIF-1, has been recently characterized in the central nervous system of the medicinal leech [11].…”

Cloning and expression of a transcription factor activator protein-1 (AP-1) member identified from manila clam Venerupis philippinarum

“…The highest expression of VpAP-1 in hemocytes suggested the potential immune functions of this protein, since hemocytes were crucial for immunity defense not only by direct sequestration and killing of foreign invaders, but also by synthesis and exocytosis of bioactive molecules (Hoffmann et al, 1999;Tincu and Taylor, 2004;Roch, 1999). Furthermore, the hepatopancreas is also one of the important immune centers and detoxification organs in most species (Zhang et al, 2011); the enrichment of VpAP-1 mRNA in the hepatopancreas indicated that VpAP-1 might be involved in immunity defense. However, our results are inconsistent with previous research by De Zoysa et al (2010), where the highest and lowest expression of abalone AP-1 transcript was found in the mantle (10.8-fold) and hepatopancreas (0.3-fold) respectively.…”

“…The tissue distribution and temporal expression of VpAP-1 transcript in the hemocytes of clams challenged with V. anguillarum were determined by quantitative real-time PCR (Q-PCR) as previously described (Zhang et al, 2011;Zhao et al, 2007). Two VpAP-1 gene-specific primers P5 and P6 (Table 1) were used to amplify a product of 96 bp from cDNA, and the PCR product was sequenced to verify the specificity of RT-PCR.…”