Meeting Abstract
Peptides are the largest and most diverse class of molecules used by nervous systems for chemical communication; neuropeptides play critical roles in modulating essentially all aspects of physiology and behavior. While many methods have been used to identify neuropeptides, in silico transcriptome mining has recently become one of the most powerful strategies for peptidome elucidation. The lobster, Homarus americanus, is a crustacean of commercial and biomedical importance; considerable effort has already gone into identifying its native neuropeptides. Here, a lobster neural transcriptome was mined for transcripts encoding putative neuropeptide precursors. Using known proteins as query sequences, 30+ pre/preprohormone-encoding transcripts were identified, with nearly 200 distinct neuropeptides predicted by subjecting the deduced proteins to a well-vetted bioinformatics workflow. Included in the predicted peptidome were isoforms of adipokinetic hormone-corazonin-like peptide, allatostatin A, allatostatin C, bursicon, CCHamide, corazonin, crustacean cardioactive peptide, crustacean hyperglycemic hormone, diuretic hormone 31, diuretic hormone 44, eclosion hormone, FLRFamide, GSEFLamide, insulin-like peptide, intocin, leucokinin, myosuppressin, neuroparsin, neuropeptide F, orcokinin, pigment dispersing hormone, proctolin, pyrokinin, SIFamide, sulfakinin and tachykinin-related peptide. While some of the predicted peptides are known H. americanus isoforms, most are novel identifications, more than doubling the extant neuropeptidome for the lobster.
