Misplaced Pages

Kleptoprotein

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
The bioluminescent fish Parapriacanthus ransonneti, which obtains its luciferase protein from its diet, rather than encoding it within its own genome

A kleptoprotein is a protein which is not encoded in the genome of the organism which uses it, but instead is obtained through diet from a prey organism. Importantly, a kleptoprotein must maintain its function and be mostly or entirely undigested, drawing a distinction from proteins that are digested for nutrition, which become destroyed and non-functional in the process.

This phenomenon was first reported in the bioluminescent fish Parapriacanthus, which has specialized light organs adapted towards counter-illumination, but obtains the luciferase enzyme within these organs from bioluminescent ostracods, including Cypridina noctiluca or Vargula hilgendorfii.

See also

References

  1. Bessho-Uehara, Manabu; Yamamoto, Naoyuki; Shigenobu, Shuji; Mori, Hitoshi; Kuwata, Keiko; Oba, Yuichi (2020). "Kleptoprotein bioluminescence: Parapriacanthus fish obtain luciferase from ostracod prey". Science Advances. 6 (2). American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS): eaax4942. Bibcode:2020SciA....6.4942B. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aax4942. ISSN 2375-2548. PMC 6949039. PMID 31934625.


Stub icon

This biology article is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

Categories: