A mutation in the receptor Methoprene-tolerant alters juvenile hormone response in insects and crustaceans

• Published in: Nature communications 2013-05, Vol.4 (1), p.1856, Article 1856
• Main Authors: Miyakawa, Hitoshi, Toyota, Kenji, Hirakawa, Ikumi, Ogino, Yukiko, Miyagawa, Shinichi, Oda, Shigeto, Tatarazako, Norihisa, Miura, Toru, Colbourne, John K., Iguchi, Taisen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 631/136; 631/181; 631/45/776/1176; Amino Acid Sequence; Animals; Cloning, Molecular; Daphnia - drug effects; Daphnia - genetics; Gene Knockdown Techniques; Humanities and Social Sciences; Insecta - drug effects; Insecta - genetics; Juvenile Hormones - pharmacology; Ligands; Male; Methoprene - pharmacology; Molecular Sequence Data; multidisciplinary; Mutant Proteins - metabolism; Mutation - genetics; Phenotype; Protein Multimerization - drug effects; Receptors, Cell Surface - chemistry; Receptors, Cell Surface - genetics; Receptors, Steroid - chemistry; Receptors, Steroid - metabolism; RNA Interference; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Transcriptional Activation - drug effects; Transcriptional Activation - genetics
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2868

Juvenile hormone is an essential regulator of major developmental and life history events in arthropods. Most of the insects use juvenile hormone III as the innate juvenile hormone ligand. By contrast, crustaceans use methyl farnesoate. Despite this difference that is tied to their deep evolutionary divergence, the process of this ligand transition is unknown. Here we show that a single amino-acid substitution in the receptor Methoprene-tolerant has an important role during evolution of the arthropod juvenile hormone pathway. Microcrustacea Daphnia pulex and D. magna share a juvenile hormone signal transduction pathway with insects, involving Methoprene-tolerant and steroid receptor coactivator proteins that form a heterodimer in response to various juvenoids. Juvenile hormone-binding pockets of the orthologous genes differ by only two amino acids, yet a single substitution within Daphnia Met enhances the receptor’s responsiveness to juvenile hormone III. These results indicate that this mutation within an ancestral insect lineage contributed to the evolution of a juvenile hormone III receptor system. Juvenile hormone (JH) is a key regulator of development both in insects and the crustacea Daphnia pulex and D. magna. Here, Miyakawa et al. investigate the evolutionary significance of a single amino-acid variation between crustacea and insects in the JH receptor gene, Methoprene-tolerant.