Soybean ubiquitous urease with purification facilitator: An addition to the moonlighting studies toolbox

Soyuretox, an Intrinsically Disordered Polypeptide Derived from Soybean (Glycine Max) Ubiquitous Urease with Potential Use as a Biopesticide

“…Figure 1A shows the alignment of the amino acid sequences of Soyuretox and Jaburetox, revealing a 68% sequence identity. A structural model of Soyuretox, obtained by homology modeling using the structure of JBU [28] as template and the sequence of uSBU [25], was subjected to molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, as similarly performed in the case of Jaburetox [23]. After 500 ns of MD simulation, Soyuretox became more globular in solution, with a decrease in the radius of gyration (Figure S3), a behavior already observed for Jaburetox [23].…”

“…In soybean plants, the soybean ubiquitous urease (uSBU) is found in very low concentrations, so that the expression of the soybean ubiquitous urease (uSBU) fused to glutathione S -transferase (GST) was necessary in order to study the biological properties of this protein [25]. The recombinant uSBU-GST was toxic against filamentous fungi and pathogenic yeasts, including Candida (C.) albicans , and entomotoxic against R. prolixus , inducing aggregation of hemocytes both in vivo and in vitro [25]. Because the sequence encompassing Jaburetox in other ureases is comparatively less conserved than that of the overall protein, we asked if a sequence corresponding to Jaburetox derived from another plant urease, such as soybean, would have the same biological properties.…”

Ureases: Historical aspects, catalytic, and non-catalytic properties – A review

“…The increased cytoplasmic [Ca 2+ ] triggers exocytosis of platelet granules that contain ADP, which in turn induces the aggregation response [153] , [154] . Later the ability to induce platelet aggregation was reported for JBU [9] , the embryo-specific [155] and the ubiquitous [156] isoforms of soybean ureases, B. ( S. ) pasteurii urease [155] , [157] , and HPU [143] , thus it is a property common to one-, two-, and three-chained ureases.…”

“…The recombinant peptide jaburetox was cloned using as template the cDNA of JBURE-II, a third isoform of urease found in C. ensiformis [170] , [171] . Based on jaburetox’s sequence, a recombinant insecticidal peptide called soyuretox was produced [172] having as template the cDNA of the ubiquitous soybean urease which, like the embryo-specific urease, also kills R. prolixus [156] . Interestingly, the region that encompasses the jaburetox/soyuretox sequence, comprising about 90 amino acid residues, displays a lower similarity when compared to that of the complete sequence of different ureases, suggesting less evolutionary pressure to conserve this entomotoxic “domain” of plant ureases [15] , [167] .…”

“…In this same study, the two-chained HPU also inhibited fungal growth although with less efficiency [185] . The native ureases of cotton seeds ( G. hirsutum ) [30] and of pigeon pea [25] , and the recombinant non-ureolytic apoureases, JBURE-IIb [171] and a ubiquitous soybean urease fused to glutathione transferase [156] , were also shown to be detrimental to filamentous fungi.…”