Studying selenoproteins in

Anas zonorhyncha

Martínez M, Mira S, Pérez A, Rill A, Villaró C

• HOME
• ABSTRACT
• INTRODUCTION
  Selenium Selenoproteins Selenoproteins biosynthesis Selenoproteins families Selenoproteins machinery Anas zonorhyncha
• METHODS
  Queries acquisition Manual prediction of selenoproteins Automatic prediction of selenoproteins
• RESULTS
  Selenoproteins and machinery results Selenoproteins analysis Selenoproteins machinery analysis
• DISCUSSION
  Selenoproteins Selenoproteins machinery
• CONCLUSIONS
• REFERENCES
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• CONTACT

Selenium (Se) is an obligatory micronutrient that is critical to the normal physiology of many species, including birds. Selenium is incorporated into proteins in the form of selenocysteine (Sec), and it requires a complex machinery that decodes the UGA codon, which is usually a termination codon. The insertion of the Sec, instead of the codon stop, is performed only in presence of a secondary mRNA structure known as a selenocysteine insertion sequence (SECIS) element.

Selenoproteins are involved in several biological processes in chickens including growth performance, central nervous system function, male fertility and muscle development. It has also been related to oxidoreductase functions. Thus, these proteins are essential to achieve a normal physiological state.

The aim of this analysis is to predict the selenoproteome of Anas zonorhyncha (Eastern spot-billed duck) by comparing its genome to reference genomes. The species we used to obtain the selenoproteins of our problem animal were Gallus gallus (Red junglefowl) and Homo sapiens (human) from SelenoDB, and in some exceptions, from Ensembl. In regard to the prediction, our team designed an automatic program to accelerate the procedure. Also, several bioinformatic tools, such as Blast, Exonerate or T-Coffee, were used in order to achieve conclusions. The obtained alignments and its SECIS elements were analyzed with Seblastian.

Seventeen different selenoproteins, six machinery proteins and three cysteine-homologous were found in the Eastern spot-billed duck. These results are significant since the selenoproteome of birds remain considerably little understood. Nonetheless, more research needs to be done in order to fully characterize the selenoproteins present in Anas zonorhyncha.