Recent findings in evolution and function of insect innexins

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThe past decade has seen significant advances in the field of innexin biology, particularly in the model invertebrate organisms, the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and the fly Drosophila melanogaster. However, advances in genomics and functional techniques during this same period are ushering in a period of comparative innexin biology. Insects are the most diverse metazoan taxa in terms of species number, as well as in developmental, physiological, and morphological processes. Combined with genomics data, the study of innexins should rapidly advance. In this review, we consider the current state of knowledge regarding innexins in insects, focusing on innexin diversity, both evolutionary and functional. We also consider an unusual set of innexins, known as vinnexins, that have been isolated from mutualistic viruses of some parasitoid wasps. We conclude with a call to study insect innexins from a broader, evolutionary perspective. Knowledge derived from such comparative studies will offer significant insight into developmental and evolutionary physiology, as well as specific functional processes in a taxon that has huge biomedical and ecological impact on humans.

Structural insight into arginine methylation by the mouse protein arginine methyltransferase 7: a zinc finger freezes the mimic of the dimeric state into a single active site

“…During the last stages of the submission of this paper, two PRMT7 structures were described in papers that were in the press: PRMT7 from Trypanosoma brucei (TbPRMT7) and Caenorhabditis elegans (CePRMT7) (Wang, Zhu, Cacares et al, 2014;Hasegawa et al, 2014). In the medium-resolution structure of CePRMT7, the authors observed a 'huge and unclear' electron density at the level of the four coordinating residues (Hasegawa et al, 2014) and assigned it as covalent bonds between the cysteines and the histidine. It is more likely that a zinc ion is also tightly bound in this structure.…”

The molecular and immunochemical expression of innexins in the yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti: Insights into putative life stage- and tissue-specific functions of gap junctions

“…Note that since the original description of these genes in A. aegypti (Weng et al 2008), one has been renamed. That is, the gene initially designated as ‘passover’ due to its homology to the shakB / passover gene in D. melanogaster is now named as innexin 8 ( Inx8 ) to follow the nomenclature of Hasegawa and Turnbull (2014). The AeInx primers were designed to amplify a product of approximately 500 base pairs (bp).…”

A structural and functional comparison of gap junction channels composed of connexins and innexins

“…The name innexin replaced OPUS (Phelan et al, ) as the growing family of gap junction genes in Drosophila and c. elegans became apparent (Phelan and Starich, ). Innexins have since been identified in all invertebrate phyla with the exception of sponges and echinoderms (Phelan, ; Yen and Saier, ; Hasegawa and Turnbull, ). Innexin genes are also encoded in the genome of a parasitic wasp (Turnbull et al, ).…”