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Infection and Immunity, June 2002, p. 3259-3263, Vol. 70, No. 6
0019-9567/02/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/IAI.70.6.3259-3263.2002
Copyright © 2002, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard School of Public Health,1 Department of Cell Biology, Boston University School of Dental Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts,2 The Institute for Genomic Research, Rockville, Maryland3
Received 3 August 2001/ Returned for modification 1 October 2001/ Accepted 22 February 2002
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Although neither chitin synthase nor chitinase is present in E. invadens trophozoites, both enzymes are expressed by encysting amebae (5, 28). Amebic chitinases have a series of hydrophilic heptapeptide repeats between an N-terminal signal sequence and a C-terminal glycohydrolase domain (6, 14, 16). The chitinase heptapeptide repeats, which vary from 4 to 18 repeats in different isolates of E. histolytica and Entamoeba dispar, have an amino acid composition similar to that of spacers or hinges present between CBDs of the Jacob lectin (11, 13). This similarity led us to identify a putative 8-Cys CBD near the N terminus of the E. histolytica and E. invadens chitinases. Plant chitinases also have 8-Cys CBDs at their N termini, which presumably help the chitinases bind to the chitin fibrils that the glycohydrolase domain will degrade (3).
We expressed the 8-Cys CBD of E. histolytica chitinase in trophozoites and showed that it does bind to chitin. A survey of shotgun sequences of the E. histolytica genome showed that this 8-Cys CBD is also present at the N termini of three hypothetical proteins (Jessie 1 to Jessie 3). The CBDs of Jessie 2 and Jessie 3 were expressed and shown to bind chitin. In this study, we also identified homologues of the E. invadens Jacob lectin in E. histolytica and E. dispar and showed that the E. histolytica Jacob is a chitin-binding protein.
A predicted E. histolytica Jacob lectin has two 6-Cys, chitin-binding domains. The peptide sequence of the E. invadens Jacob lectin and TBLASTN were used to search 49,000 E. histolytica HM-1:IMSS strain genomic DNA sequences, which were deposited in the Genome Survey Sequences database of the National Center for Biotechnology Information by one of the coauthors (B. Loftus) (1, 11). A predicted E. histolytica Jacob lectin, which was 151 amino acids long with a predicted 21-amino-acid signal sequence at its N terminus, showed 23% amino acid identity with a corresponding region of the E. invadens Jacob lectin (Fig. 1A) (11, 22, 26). The two predicted CBDs of the E. histolytica Jacob each contained six Cys residues, which might form three disulfide bonds as described for CBDs of insect peritrophins and insect, nematode, and fungal chitinases (18, 24, 27). Like the E. invadens Jacob lectin, the predicted E. histolytica Jacob lectin did not appear to contain any transmembrane domains, which might anchor the peptide in the plasma membrane (25). The predicted E. histolytica Jacob CBDs did contain numerous aromatic amino acids (Tyr, Phe, and Trp), which have been implicated in carbohydrate binding by plant lectins (3, 29). There was a predicted N-linked glycosylation site in the second CBD of the E. histolytica Jacob lectin, as well as two predicted N-linked glycosylation sites in the hydrophilic spacer between the two CBDs (17). These N-linked glycosylation sites suggest that the E. histolytica Jacob lectin may be a glycoprotein like the E. invadens Jacob lectin (11). Northern blot analysis suggested that mRNAs for the E. histolytica Jacob lectin are not transcribed by E. histolytica trophozoites, which do not encyst in axenic culture (data not shown). We were unable to obtain fresh E. histolytica cysts for Northern blot analysis. Jacob mRNAs are also absent from E. invadens trophozoites but are present in E. invadens cysts (11).
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An E. dispar Jacob lectin also has two putative 6-Cys, chitin-binding domains. The E. histolytica jacob gene was used to identify an E. dispar jacob gene from a genomic DNA library, which was a generous gift of Michael Duchene (23). The predicted E. dispar Jacob lectin, which was 150 amino acids long with a predicted 21-amino-acid signal sequence, showed 85% amino acid identity with the E. histolytica Jacob lectin (Fig. 1A). Most of the amino acid differences between the E. histolytica and E. dispar Jacob lectins were clustered in the first CBD, while two of three predicted N-linked glycosylation sites were conserved in the E. dispar Jacob lectin. No other homologues of the Jacob lectins were identified in GenBank NR, dBEST, Genome Survey Sequences, and unfinished microbial databases, using BLASTP or TBLASTN (1). These results suggest the Entamoeba Jacob lectins are unique, although they serve the same function (cross-linking chitin fibrils) as insect peritrophins (24). Whether monoclonal antibodies to Jacob lectins may be used to discriminate cysts of E. histolytica from those of E. dispar in patients' stools remains to be determined.
The E. histolytica chitinase has a unique 8-Cys chitin-binding domain at its N terminus. An alignment of the N termini of E. histolytica and E. invadens chitinases suggested the presence of a putative CBD containing eight Cys residues, which might form four disulfide bonds as in plant lectins (Fig. 2A) (3, 6, 19, 29). Although the signal sequences and hydrophilic repeats of the E. histolytica and E. invadens chitinases were not alignable, the putative CBDs shared 42 of 64 amino acids (66%) (6, 22). Further, the CBDs have eight positionally identical aromatic amino acids (Tyr, Phe, and Trp), which might be involved in carbohydrate binding (3, 29). Although plant lectins and chitinases also have 8-Cys CBDs, the amebic chitinase 8-Cys CBDs were not related to them by a common ancestry (1, 3, 19, 29). This is another example of convergent evolution (9), as has been argued for the 6-Cys CBDs of the Jacob lectin and insect peritrophins (11, 24). The heptapeptide repeats of the E. histolytica and E. dispar chitinases, which vary so much from one clinical isolate to the next (13), are likely spacers or hinges between the CBD and the catalytic domain.
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Three hypothetical E. histolytica lectins (Jessie 1 to Jessie 3) contain 8-Cys CBDs like those of chitinases. The hypothetical lectins Jessie 1 to Jessie 3, which were identified by searching the E. histolytica shotgun sequences with the chitinase CBD and TBLASTN, also contained an 8-Cys putative CBD just distal to a predicted signal sequence (Fig. 2A) (1). Twenty amino acids (31%), including the eight Cys residues, were strictly conserved in the 64-amino-acid CBDs of chitinases and Jessies (26). An additional 24 amino acids (38%), including numerous aromatics, were conserved in the majority of chitinase and Jessie CBDs. Jessie 1 and Jessie 2, which were 90 and 97 amino acids long, respectively, each contained a single site for N-linked glycosylation and little else C-terminal to the CBD. Jessie 3, which was 621 amino acids long, contained a series of hydrophilic amino acids C-prime to the 8-Cys CBD, similar to the hydrophilic repeats that precede the catalytic domain of amebic chitinases (6). However, the C-terminal domain of Jessie 3, which was 469 amino acids long, showed no homology to the catalytic domains of chitinases or any other proteins in GenBank (1). Northern blots with probes specific to each hypothetical Jessie gene suggested that mRNAs for all of the Jessie lectins are absent from E. histolytica trophozoites (data not shown).
To test the function of the 8-Cys CBDs of the Jessie lectins, the entire Jessie 1 and Jessie 2 lectins and the putative CBD of Jessie 3 were expressed with a c-myc epitope tag in transfected E. histolytica trophozoites by methods described above for the Jacob lectin. While all three Jessie lectins were present in small vesicles of transfected amebae (Fig. 2C to E), only Jessie 2 and the Jessie 3 CBD bound to particulate chitin (Fig. 2F). It is not clear why Jessie 1 failed to bind chitin.
The presence of the same 8-Cys CBD in at least four different proteins (chitinase and three Jessie lectins) suggests the gene encoding this unique motif has been duplicated and reinserted into the E. histolytica genome at least three times. Similarly, the 8-Cys CBDs of plants are present in chitinases and lectins (3, 19, 29) and the 6-Cys CBDs of insects are present in chitinases and peritrophins (24), while a Cys-rich sialic acid-binding domain is conserved in the P. falciparum 175-kDa erythrocyte binding protein and other homologous proteins in Plasmodia (15).
Summary. We have identified Entamoeba genes encoding proteins that contain unique 6-Cys or 8-Cys CBDs. A model showing the 6-Cys CBDs of Entamoeba Jacob lectins and the 8-Cys CBDs of chitinase and Jessie lectins is shown in Fig. 3. The CBDs of Entamoeba are similar to other known CBDs in that they have conserved Cys and aromatic residues, but they are not related by a common ancestry (convergent evolution) (3, 9, 11, 24, 29). The 6-Cys and 8-Cys CBDs are much easier to define than are the carbohydrate recognition domains of the large and intermediate subunits of the E. histolytica Gal/GalNAc lectin (4, 8, 20, 21). Future studies beyond the scope of the present experiments will attempt to determine whether Jacob and Jessie lectins are located in the E. histolytica cyst wall.
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| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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We acknowledge the expert technical support of Jean Lai of the Harvard School of Public Health for confocal microscopy.
| FOOTNOTES |
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