Abstract
Tardigrades are one of the most stress-resistant complex organisms on the Earth, of particular interest is their high radioresistance. The protein Dsup (Damage suppressor) recently discovered in R. varieornatus is directly related to a decrease of the level of nuclear DNA damage by ionizing radiation; however, the mechanism of this process is not fully understood. To better understand the function and origin of the Dsup protein, a comparative analysis of the amino acid sequence of this protein with the amino acid sequences of proteins in open databases was carried out. We showed that other DNA-binding proteins of tardigrades have the highest similarity for the Dsup protein, including histone proteins and proteins involved in the response to stress, as well as the SRP40 yeast protein. Thus we hypothesize that Dsup could arise from some ancestral histone-like protein.
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Zarubin, M., Kuldoshina, O. & Kravchenko, E. Unique Radioprotective Damage Suppressor Protein (Dsup): Comparative Sequence Analysis. Phys. Part. Nuclei Lett. 19, 309–311 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1547477122030207
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S1547477122030207