Evidence of Post-transcriptional Regulation in the Maintenance of a Partial Muscle Phenotype by Electrogenic Cells of S. Macrurus.
From: Department of Biology, Foster Hall, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003, USA.
The FASEB journal : official publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology
- Publish Date: Dec 2006
- ISSN: 1530-6860
- Volume: 20
- Issue: 14
- Pages: 2540
- Medium: Internet
- Language: English
- Citation (JAMA): Cuellar Heriberto, Kim Jung A, Unguez Graciela A, et al. Evidence of Post-transcriptional Regulation in the Maintenance of a Partial Muscle Phenotype by Electrogenic Cells of S. Macrurus.. FASEB J. Dec 2006;20:2540
Abstract
Electrocytes, the current-producing cells of electric organs (EOs) in electric fish, are unique in that they derive from striated muscle and they possess biochemical characteristics of both muscle and non-muscle cells. In the freshwater teleost Sternopygus macrurus, electrocytes are multinucleated cells that do not contract yet retain expression of some proteins common to skeletal muscle cells. Given the role that transcriptional regulation plays in the activation of the myogenic program in vertebrates, we examined the expression patterns of several genes associated with multiple functions of skeletal muscle in mature electrocytes of S. macrurus. Our expression analyses detected transcripts for alpha-actin, alpha-acetylcholine (ACh) receptor (alpha-AChR), desmin, muscle creatine kinase (MCK), myosin heavy chain (MHC) isoforms, titin, tropomyosin, and troponin-T genes in the EO. However, immunolabeling studies revealed that electrocytes do not contain MCK, MHCs, or tropomyosin or troponin-T proteins. These results underscore the contribution of gene regulatory mechanisms in the maintenance of the muscle-like phenotype of EO that may be transcriptional-independent. We also report the classification and frequency of distinct transcripts from a random selection of 420 clones from an EO cDNA library. This is the first characterization of expressed genes in an EO, and it is an important step toward identifying mechanisms that affect different muscle protein systems for the evolution of highly specialized noncontractile tissues. Evidence of post-transcriptional regulation in the maintenance of a partial muscle phenotype by electrogenic cells of S. macrurus.
Mesh Headings (Keywords): Animals, Electric Fish, Electric Organ, Gene Expression Profiling, Genes, Tumor Suppressor, Muscle Proteins, Muscle, Skeletal, Nuclear Proteins, RNA Processing, Post-Transcriptional, Tail
Check for Full Text / PubMed Unique Identifier (PMID): 17077280
This abstract is part of PubMed, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. PubMed includes more than 17 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles. See Copyright and Disclaimers.
Linked medical terms appearing on this page are added by Healia to help readers find more information and are not part of the original PubMed document.
The data herein was last updated on July 8th, 2008 and may not reflect the most current and accurate data available from NLM.