Structural and functional divergence of growth hormone-releasing hormone receptors in early sarcopterygians: lungfish and Xenopus

Functional characterization of growth hormone releasing hormone and its receptor in amphioxus with implication for origin of hypothalamic-pituitary axis

Growth hormone-releasing hormone (GHRH) has been widely shown to stimulate growth hormone (GH) production via binding to GHRH receptor GHRHR in various species of vertebrates, but information regarding the functional roles of GHRH and GHRHR in the protochordate amphioxus remains rather scarce. We showed here that two mature peptides, BjGHRH-1 and BjGHRH-2, encoded by BjGHRH precursor, and a single BjGHRHR protein were identified in the amphioxus Branchiostoma. japonicum. Like the distribution profiles of vertebrate GHRHs and GHRHRs, both the genes Bjghrh and Bjghrhr were widely expressed in the different tissues of amphioxus, including in the cerebral vesicle, Hatschek's pit, neural tube, gill, hepatic caecum, notochord, testis and ovary. Moreover, both BjGHRH-1 and BjGHRH-2 interacted with BjGHRHR, and triggered the cAMP/PKA signal pathway in a dose-dependent manner. Importantly, BjGHRH-1 and BjGHRH-2 were both able to activate the expression of GH-like gene in the cells of Hatschek's pit. These indicate that a functional vertebrate-like GHRH-GHRHR axis had already emerged in amphioxus, which is a seminal innovation making physiological divergence including reproduction, growth, metabolism, stress and osmoregulation possible during the early evolution of vertebrates.

Functional Pairing of Class B1 Ligand-GPCR in Cephalochordate Provides Evidence of the Origin of PTH and PACAP/Glucagon Receptor Family

Several hypotheses have been proposed regarding the origin and evolution of the secretin family of peptides and receptors. However, identification of homologous ligand-receptor pairs in invertebrates and vertebrates is difficult because of the low levels of sequence identity between orthologs of distant species. In this study, five receptors structurally related to the vertebrate class B1 G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) family were characterized from amphioxus (Branchiostoma floridae). Phylogenetic analysis showed that they clustered with vertebrate parathyroid hormone receptors (PTHR) and pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP)/glucagon receptors. These PTHR-like receptors shared synteny with several PTH and PACAP/glucagon receptors identified in spotted gar, Xenopus, and human, indicating that amphioxus preserves the ancestral chordate genomic organization of these receptor subfamilies. According to recent data by Mirabeau and Joly, amphioxus also expresses putative peptide ligands including homologs of PTH (bfPTH1 and 2) and PACAP/GLUC-like peptides (bfPACAP/GLUCs) that may interact with these receptors. Functional analyses showed that bfPTH1 and bfPTH2 activated one of the amphioxus receptors (bf98C) whereas bfPACAP/GLUCs strongly interacted with bf95. In summary, our data confirm the presence of PTH and PACAP/GLUC ligand-receptor pairs in amphioxus, demonstrating that functional homologs of vertebrate PTH and PACAP/glucagon GPCR subfamilies arose before the cephalochordate divergence from the ancestor of tunicates and vertebrates.

Fish genomes provide novel insights into the evolution of vertebrate secretin receptors and their ligand

The secretin receptor (SCTR) is a member of Class 2 subfamily B1 GPCRs and part of the PAC1/VPAC receptor subfamily. This receptor has long been known in mammals but has only recently been identified in other vertebrates including teleosts, from which it was previously considered to be absent. The ligand for SCTR in mammals is secretin (SCT), an important gastrointestinal peptide, which in teleosts has not yet been isolated, or the gene identified. This study revises the evolutionary model previously proposed for the secretin-GPCRs in metazoan by analysing in detail the fishes, the most successful of the extant vertebrates. All the Actinopterygii genomes analysed and the Chondrichthyes and Sarcopterygii fish possess a SCTR gene that shares conserved sequence, structure and synteny with the tetrapod homologue. Phylogenetic clustering and gene environment comparisons revealed that fish and tetrapod SCTR shared a common origin and diverged early from the PAC1/VPAC subfamily group. In teleosts SCTR duplicated as a result of the fish specific whole genome duplication but in all the teleost genomes analysed, with the exception of tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus), one of the duplicates was lost. The function of SCTR in teleosts is unknown but quantitative PCR revealed that in both sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) and tilapia (Oreochromis mossambicus) transcript abundance is high in the gastrointestinal tract suggesting it may intervene in similar processes to those in mammals. In contrast, no gene encoding the ligand SCT was identified in the ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii) although it was present in the coelacanth (lobe finned fish, Sarcopterygii) and in the elephant shark (holocephalian). The genes in linkage with SCT in tetrapods and coelacanth were also identified in ray-finned fishes supporting the idea that it was lost from their genome. At present SCTR remains an orphan receptor in ray-finned fishes and it will be of interest in the future to establish why SCT was lost and which ligand substitutes for it so that full characterization of the receptor can occur.