In March 2019, Antonio Miranda-Vizuete team of IBIS (Instituto de Biomedicina de Sevilla) in Spain published an article entitled "Redox-dependent and redox-independent functions of Caenorhabditis elegans thioredoxin" in Redox Biology, a publication owned by Elsevier. Dr. Vizuete ordered the strain PHX206 trx-1(syb206) from SunyBiotech to generate C38S & C41S double mutations, and integrated arrays PHX200 trx-1(ok1449)II; (sybIs6) sybIs6[Plips-6:: GFP; Pmyo-2:: mCherry] which serve as supportive materials to the paper.
The research contents of this paper are as follows:
Brief introduction
Thioredoxins are a class of ubiquitous, small redox proteins that function as general disulphide reductases by virtue of the reversible oxidation of the two cysteine residues at their conserved active site Cys-Gly-Pro-Cys (CGPC). Thioredoxins (TRX) are traditionally considered as enzymes catalyzing redox reactions. However, redox-independent functions of thioredoxins have been described in different organisms, although the underlying molecular mechanisms are yet unknown.
However, the mechanistic analysis of the redox-independent functions of metazoan thioredoxins is hindered by the embryonic lethal phenotypes of thioredoxin mutants in higher organisms.
Achievements
The researchers firstly generated endogenous redox-inactive thioredoxin in C.elegans. They made C38S & C41S double mutations on the TRX-1 and demonstrated that the mutant was redox inactive in biochemical activity assays (Fig. 1) and could then be used to explore which TRX-1 functions are redox-independent.
They then find that TRX-1 dually regulates the formation of an endurance larval stage (dauer) by interacting with the insulin pathway in a redox-independent manner and the cGMP pathway in a redox-dependent manner. Moreover, the requirement of TRX-1 for the extended longevity of worms with compromised insulin signaling or under calorie restriction relies on TRX-1 redox activity (Fig. 2).
Finally, they identified a novel function of C. elegans TRX-1 in male food-leaving behavior that is redox-dependent (Fig. 3).
In summary, their results provide a proof to the use of C. elegans as an animal modelnot only to identify novel redox-independent functions of metazoan thioredoxins but, given the genetic amenability of this model, to delve deeper into their molecular mechanisms.
SunyBiotech is specializing in providing precise genome edited C. elegans. All strains generated by SunyBiotech will bare our nomenclature. PHX and syb is the strain designation and allele designation, respectively. We will continue working hard to provide high-quality services with higher efficiency.
