OSCA/TMEM63 are an evolutionarily conserved family of mechanically activated ion channels
- The Scripps Research Institute, United States
Abstract
Mechanically activated (MA) ion channels convert physical forces into electrical signals, and are essential for eukaryotic physiology. Despite their importance, few bona-fide MA channels have been described in plants and animals. Here, we show that various members of the OSCA and TMEM63 family of proteins from plants, flies, and mammals confer mechanosensitivity to naïve cells. We conclusively demonstrate that OSCA1.2, one of the Arabidopsis thaliana OSCA proteins, is an inherently mechanosensitive, pore-forming ion channel. Our results suggest that OSCA/TMEM63 proteins are the largest family of MA ion channels identified, and are conserved across eukaryotes. Our findings will enable studies to gain deep insight into molecular mechanisms of MA channel gating, and will facilitate a better understanding of mechanosensory processes in vivo across plants and animals.
Data availability
All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in the manuscript.
Article and author information
Author details
Sebastian Jojoa Cruz
Funding
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R35NS105067)
- Ardem Patapoutian
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- Ardem Patapoutian
National Institutes of Health (R21DE025329)
- Adrienne E Dubin
Ray Thomas Edwards Foundation
- Andrew B Ward
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2018, Murthy et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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OSCA/TMEM63 are an evolutionarily conserved family of mechanically activated ion channels
eLife 7:e41844.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.41844
Further reading
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- Evolutionary Biology
The majority of highly polymorphic genes are related to immune functions and with over 100 alleles within a population, genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) are the most polymorphic loci in vertebrates. How such extraordinary polymorphism arose and is maintained is controversial. One possibility is heterozygote advantage (HA), which can in principle maintain any number of alleles, but biologically explicit models based on this mechanism have so far failed to reliably predict the coexistence of significantly more than 10 alleles. We here present an eco-evolutionary model showing that evolution can result in the emergence and maintenance of more than 100 alleles under HA if the following two assumptions are fulfilled: first, pathogens are lethal in the absence of an appropriate immune defence; second, the effect of pathogens depends on host condition, with hosts in poorer condition being affected more strongly. Thus, our results show that HA can be a more potent force in explaining the extraordinary polymorphism found at MHC loci than currently recognised.
