OSCA/TMEM63 are an evolutionarily conserved family of mechanically activated ion channels
Abstract
Mechanically activated (MA) ion channels convert physical forces into electrical signals, and are essential for eukaryotic physiology. Despite their importance, few bona-fide MA channels have been described in plants and animals. Here, we show that various members of the OSCA and TMEM63 family of proteins from plants, flies, and mammals confer mechanosensitivity to naïve cells. We conclusively demonstrate that OSCA1.2, one of the Arabidopsis thaliana OSCA proteins, is an inherently mechanosensitive, pore-forming ion channel. Our results suggest that OSCA/TMEM63 proteins are the largest family of MA ion channels identified, and are conserved across eukaryotes. Our findings will enable studies to gain deep insight into molecular mechanisms of MA channel gating, and will facilitate a better understanding of mechanosensory processes in vivo across plants and animals.
Data availability
All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in the manuscript.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R35NS105067)
- Ardem Patapoutian
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- Ardem Patapoutian
National Institutes of Health (R21DE025329)
- Adrienne E Dubin
Ray Thomas Edwards Foundation
- Andrew B Ward
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2018, Murthy et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 11,294
- views
-
- 1,869
- downloads
-
- 296
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Further reading
-
eLife has published papers on topics related to the molecular structure and functional mechanisms of a diverse array of ion channel proteins.
-
- Evolutionary Biology
Cichlid fishes inhabiting the East African Great Lakes, Victoria, Malawi, and Tanganyika, are textbook examples of parallel evolution, as they have acquired similar traits independently in each of the three lakes during the process of adaptive radiation. In particular, ‘hypertrophied lip’ has been highlighted as a prominent example of parallel evolution. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms remain poorly understood. In this study, we conducted an integrated comparative analysis between the hypertrophied and normal lips of cichlids across three lakes based on histology, proteomics, and transcriptomics. Histological and proteomic analyses revealed that the hypertrophied lips were characterized by enlargement of the proteoglycan-rich layer, in which versican and periostin proteins were abundant. Transcriptome analysis revealed that the expression of extracellular matrix-related genes, including collagens, glycoproteins, and proteoglycans, was higher in hypertrophied lips, regardless of their phylogenetic relationships. In addition, the genes in Wnt signaling pathway, which is involved in promoting proteoglycan expression, was highly expressed in both the juvenile and adult stages of hypertrophied lips. Our comprehensive analyses showed that hypertrophied lips of the three different phylogenetic origins can be explained by similar proteomic and transcriptomic profiles, which may provide important clues into the molecular mechanisms underlying phenotypic parallelisms in East African cichlids.