Journal Article

Transcriptome Analysis in Tardigrade Species Reveals Specific Molecular Pathways for Stress Adaptations

Daniela Beisser, Marcus Frohme, Alexander Matthias Siegl, Tobias Müller, Ralph O. Schill, Alexander V. Shkumatov, Elham Schokraie, Julia C. Engelmann, Chunguang Liang, Thomas Dandekar, Martina Schnölzer, Frank Förster, Brahim Mali, Markus A. Grohme

2012

Overview

Tardigrades have unique stress-adaptations that allow them to survive extremes of cold, heat, radiation and vacuum. To study this, encoded protein clusters and pathways from an ongoing transcriptome study on the tardigrade Milnesium tardigradum were analyzed using bioinformatics tools and compared to expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from Hypsibius dujardini, revealing major pathways involved in resistance against extreme environmental conditions. ESTs are available on the Tardigrade Workbench along with software and databank updates. Our analysis reveals that RNA stability motifs for M. tardigradum are different from typical motifs known from higher animals. M. tardigradum and H. dujardini protein clusters and conserved domains imply metabolic storage pathways for glycogen, glycolipids and specific secondary metabolism as well as stress response pathways (including heat shock proteins, bmh2, and specific repair pathways). Redox-, DNA-, stress- and protein protection pathways complement specific repair capabilities to achieve the strong robustness of M. tardigradum. These pathways are partly conserved in other animals and their manipulation could boost stress adaptation even in human cells. However, the unique combination of resistance and repair pathways make tardigrades and M. tardigradum in particular so highly stress resistant.

• Publisher: Libertas Academica,SAGE Publishing,SAGE Publications,Sage Publications Ltd. (UK),Sage Publications Ltd
• Subject: Binding proteins / Bioinformatics / Environmental conditions / Hypsibius dujardini / Milnesium tardigradum / Original Research / Physiological aspects / RNA