The glucose transporter 1 -GLUT1- from the white shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei is up-regulated during hypoxia

Abstract

During hypoxia the shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei accelerates anaerobic glycolysis to obtain energy; therefore, a correct supply of glucose to the cells is needed. Facilitated glucose transport across the cells is mediated by a group of membrane embedded integral proteins called GLUT; being GLUT1 the most ubiquitous form. In this work, we report the first cDNA nucleotide and deduced amino acid sequences of a glucose transporter 1 from L. vannamei. A 1619 bp sequence was obtained by RT-PCR and RACE approaches. The 5´ UTR is 161 bp and the poly A tail is exactly after the stop codon in the mRNA. The ORF is 1485 bp and codes for 485 amino acids. The deduced protein sequence has high identity to GLUT1 proteins from several species and contains all the main features of glucose transporter proteins, including twelve transmembrane domains, the conserved motives and amino acids involved in transport activity, ligands binding and membrane anchor. Therefore, we decided to name this sequence, glucose transporter 1 of L. vannamei (LvGLUT1). A partial gene sequence of 8.87 Kbp was also obtained; it contains the complete coding sequence divided in 10 exons. LvGlut1 expression was detected in hemocytes, hepatopancreas, intestine gills, muscle and pleopods. The higher relative expression was found in gills and the lower in hemocytes. This indicates that LvGlut1 is ubiquitously expressed but its levels are tissue-specific and upon short-term hypoxia, the GLUT1 transcripts increase 3.7-fold in hepatopancreas and gills. To our knowledge, this is the first evidence of expression of GLUT1 in crustaceans.

Response of facilitative glucose transporter 1 to salinity stress and dietary carbohydrate nutrition in white shrimpLitopenaeus vannamei

“…The ORF in this study was 15 amino acid longer than that in Martínez‐Quintana's research (Martínez‐Quintana et al . ) and 66 amino acid shorter than that in Huang's study (Huang et al . ), and we found a Mos polyadenylation response element (Mos‐PRE) and Gamma‐interferon‐activated inhibitor of Ceruloplasmin mRNA translation (GAIT elements) in the 3′UTR of lvGLUT1 which was different with that sequence.…”

“…He found that LvGLUT1 expressed the highest in gills, followed by pleopods, intestine, muscle, hemocytes and hepatopancreas in turn (Martínez‐Quintana et al . ). The location of the gene expression is closely related to the tissue function and metabolism (Wang et al .…”

“…Martínez‐Quintana and co‐workers () found that the expression of LvGLUT1 had fluctuations with the time under hypoxia stress. In this study, the fold change of GLUT1 gene expression also had fluctuations of two troughs and one peak regulation in different tissues of shrimp following the transfer from a salinity of 20–3 g L −1 .…”

“…Although the role of GLUT1 in L. vannamei has been studied by Martínez‐Quintana et al . () and Huang et al . (), they have studied the function of GLUT1 in shrimp during the hypoxia stress and WSSV infection.…”

“…; Martínez‐Quintana et al . ). Although the role of GLUT1 in L. vannamei has been studied by Martínez‐Quintana et al .…”