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Functional mapping of protein kinase A reveals its importance in adult Schistosoma mansoni motor activity.

Paulu S R de Saram | Margarida Ressurreição | Angela J Davies | David Rollinson | Aidan M Emery | Anthony J Walker
PLoS neglected tropical diseases | 2013

Cyclic AMP (cAMP)-dependent protein kinase/protein kinase A (PKA) is the major transducer of cAMP signalling in eukaryotic cells. Here, using laser scanning confocal microscopy and 'smart' anti-phospho PKA antibodies that exclusively detect activated PKA, we provide a detailed in situ analysis of PKA signalling in intact adult Schistosoma mansoni, a causative agent of debilitating human intestinal schistosomiasis. In both adult male and female worms, activated PKA was consistently found associated with the tegument, oral and ventral suckers, oesophagus and somatic musculature. In addition, the seminal vesicle and gynaecophoric canal muscles of the male displayed activated PKA whereas in female worms activated PKA localized to the ootype wall, the ovary, and the uterus particularly around eggs during expulsion. Exposure of live worms to the PKA activator forskolin (50 µM) resulted in striking PKA activation in the central and peripheral nervous system including at nerve endings at/near the tegument surface. Such neuronal PKA activation was also observed without forskolin treatment, but only in a single batch of worms. In addition, PKA activation within the central and peripheral nervous systems visibly increased within 15 min of worm-pair separation when compared to that observed in closely coupled worm pairs. Finally, exposure of adult worms to forskolin induced hyperkinesias in a time and dose dependent manner with 100 µM forskolin significantly increasing the frequency of gross worm movements to 5.3 times that of control worms (P≤0.001). Collectively these data are consistent with PKA playing a central part in motor activity and neuronal communication, and possibly interplay between these two systems in S. mansoni. This study, the first to localize a protein kinase when exclusively in an activated state in adult S. mansoni, provides valuable insight into the intricacies of functional protein kinase signalling in the context of whole schistosome physiology.

Pubmed ID: 23326613

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PhosphoSitePlus: Protein Modification Site (tool)

RRID:SCR_001837

A freely accessible on-line systems biology resource devoted to all aspects of protein modification, as well as other post-translational modifications. It provides valuable and unique tools for both cell biologists and mass spectroscopists. PhosphoSite is a human- and mouse-centric database. It includes features such as: viewing the locations of modified residues on molecular models; browsing and searching MS2 records by disease, tissue, and cell line; submitting lists of peptides to identify previously reported genes; searching by sub-cellular localization, treatment, tissues, cell types, cell lines and diseases, and protein types and protein domains; searching for experimentally-verified kinase substrates and viewing preferred substrate motifs; and viewing MS2 spectra for peptides and sites not previously published.

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Clustal W2 (tool)

RRID:SCR_002909

THIS RESOURCE IS NO LONGER IN SERVICE, documented on January 19, 2022. Command line version of multiple sequence alignment program Clustal for DNA or proteins. Alignment is progressive and considers sequence redundancy. No longer being maintained. Please consider using Clustal Omega instead which accepts nucleic acid or protein sequences in multiple sequence formats NBRF/PIR, EMBL/UniProt, Pearson (FASTA), GDE, ALN/ClustalW, GCG/MSF, RSF.

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ImageJ (tool)

RRID:SCR_003070

Open source Java based image processing software program designed for scientific multidimensional images. ImageJ has been transformed to ImageJ2 application to improve data engine to be sufficient to analyze modern datasets.

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