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Research Paper|Volume 8, Issue 2|pp 260—271

Genomes of Strongylocentrotus franciscanus and Lytechinus variegatus: are there any genomic explanations for the two order of magnitude difference in the lifespan of sea urchins?

Petr V. Sergiev1, Artem A. Artemov2,3, Egor B. Prokhortchouk3, Olga A. Dontsova1, Grigory V. Berezkin4
  • 1Lomonosov Moscow State University, Department of Chemistry and A.N. Belozersky Institute of Physico-Chemical Biology, Moscow 119992, Russia
  • 2Lomonosov Moscow State University, Faculty of Bioengineering and Bioinformatics, Moscow 119992, Russia
  • 3Center ‘Bioengineering’, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 117312 Russia and National Research Center, Kurchatov Institute, Moscow 123098 Russia
  • 4ESN Group, 123100, Moscow, Russia
Received: October 8, 2015Accepted: January 20, 2016Published: February 7, 2016
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.100889

Copyright: © 2016 Sergiev et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Sea urchins are marine invertebrates of extreme diversity of life span. Red sea urchin S. franciscanus is among the longest living creatures of the Ocean. Its lifetime is estimated to exceed a century, while the green sea urchin L. variegatus hardly survives more than four years. We sequenced and compared the genomes of these animals aiming at determination of the genetic basis of their longevity difference. List of genes related to the longevity of other animal species was created and used for homology search among the genomic data obtained in this study. Aminoacid sequences of longevity related proteins of S. franciscanus and L. variegatus as well as from a set of model species, were aligned and grouped on the basis of the species lifespan. Aminoacid residues specific for a longevity group were identified. Proteins containing aminoacids whose identity correlated with the lifespan were clustered on the basis of their function.