Molecular Link Between Reproduction in Yeast and Humans
ScienceDaily (Feb. 15, 2011) — A novel study in the scientific journal Molecular Biology and Evolution draws a completely unexpected link between reproductive proteins in humans and proteins involved in fertilization in invertebrates, as well as mating between haploid cells in yeast. Because human and yeast are separated by 1 billion years of evolution, these findings may have important implications for our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying sex, and how they originated.
Dr Luca Jovine, Karolinska Institutet. (Credit: Fredrik Hjerling)
The lead author of the current study, Dr Luca Jovine at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, has earlier been able to describe the complete 3D structure of ZP3, a conserved vertebrate egg protein that acts as receptor for sperm at the beginning of fertilization. With this new knowledge, Luca Jovine and his team add another dimension to their research.
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Mol Biol Evol
The Molecular Basis of Sex: Linking Yeast to Human
Willie J. Swanson1, Jan E. Aagaard1, Victor D. Vacquier2, Magnus Monné3,4,
Hamed Sadat Al Hosseini3 and
Luca Jovine*,3
+Author Affiliations
1Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-5065, USA
2Marine Biology Research Division, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0202, USA
3Department of Biosciences and Nutrition & Center for Biosciences, Karolinska Institutet, Huddinge, SE-141 83, Sweden
4Present address: Department of Chemistry, University of Basilicata, Via dell'Ateneo Lucano 10, I-85100 Potenza, Italy
*Corresponding author: E-mail: luca.jovine@ki.se ; telephone: +46.8.52481136; fax: +46.8.6081501
Received July 23, 2010.
Revision received December 8, 2010.
Revision received January 20, 2011.
Accepted January 23, 2011.
Abstract
Species-specific recognition between egg and sperm, a crucial event that marks the beginning of fertilization in multicellular organisms, mirrors the binding between haploid cells of opposite mating type in unicellular eukaryotes such as yeast. However, as implied by the lack of sequence similarity between sperm-binding regions of invertebrate and vertebrate egg coat proteins, these interactions are thought to rely on completely different molecular entities. Here we argue that these recognition systems are, in fact, related: despite being separated by 0.6-1 billion years of evolution, functionally essential domains of a mollusc sperm receptor and a yeast mating protein adopt the same three-dimensional fold as egg zona pellucida (ZP) proteins mediating the binding between gametes in humans.
Key words
Fertilization, egg-sperm interaction, egg coat, zona pellucida domain, yeast mating, protein structure
© The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail:
journals.permissions@oup.com
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