Author:

Keywords:

Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, HYDROXYLATING MONOOXYGENASE, BIOACTIVE PEPTIDES, CONVERTASE-2, PITUITARY, BEHAVIOR, PROTEIN, PROFILE, LACKING, CLONING, DOMAIN, Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), PAL, PAM, PHM, amidation, copper monooxygenase, mass spectrometry (MS), neuropeptide, peptides, peptidomics, Amidine-Lyases, Amino Acid Sequence, Animals, Biosynthetic Pathways, Caenorhabditis elegans, Caenorhabditis elegans Proteins, Copper, Gene Deletion, Humans, Mixed Function Oxygenases, Multienzyme Complexes, Mutation, Neuropeptides, Sequence Alignment, Tandem Mass Spectrometry, ALPHA-HYDROXYLATING MONOOXYGENASE, SCHISTOSOMA-MANSONI, NERVOUS-SYSTEM, G052217N#54021078, C14/15/049#53326505, 03 Chemical Sciences, 06 Biological Sciences, 11 Medical and Health Sciences, 31 Biological sciences, 32 Biomedical and clinical sciences, 34 Chemical sciences

Abstract:

Neuropeptides constitute a vast and functionally diverse family of neurochemical signaling molecules, and are widely involved in the regulation of various physiological processes. The nematode C. elegans is well-suited for the study of neuropeptide biochemistry and function, as neuropeptide biosynthesis enzymes are not essential for C. elegans viability. This permits the study of neuropeptide biosynthesis in mutants lacking certain neuropeptide-processing enzymes. Mass spectrometry has been used to study the effects of proprotein convertase and carboxypeptidase mutations on proteolytic processing of neuropeptide precursors and on the peptidome in C. elegans. However, the enzymes required for the last step in the production of many bioactive peptides – the carboxyterminal amidation reaction – have not been characterized in this manner. Here, we describe three genes that encode homologs of neuropeptide amidation enzymes in C. elegans and used tandem LC-MS to compare neuropeptides in wild-type animals with those in newly generated mutants for these putative amidation enzymes. We report that mutants lacking both a functional peptidylglycine α-hydroxylating monooxygenase (PHM) and a peptidylglycine α-amidating monooxygenase (PAM) had a severely altered neuropeptide profile and also a decreased number of offspring. Interestingly, single mutants of the amidation enzymes still expressed some fully processed amidated neuropeptides, indicating the existence of a redundant amidation mechanism in C. elegans. All MS data is available via ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD008942. In summary, the key steps in neuropeptide-processing in C. elegans seem to be executed by redundant enzymes, and loss of these enzymes severely affects brood size, supporting the need of amidated peptides for C. elegans reproduction.