Evolution of Bioluminescence in Marine Planktonic Copepods Yasuhiro Takenaka,*,1 Atsushi Yamaguchi,2 Naoki Tsuruoka,3 Masaki Torimura,4 Takashi Gojobori,5 and Yasushi Shigeri*,1 1Health Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Ikeda, Osaka, Japan 2Faculty of Fisheries Science, Hokkaido University, Hakodate, Japan 3International Patent Organism Depositary (IPOD), National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan 4Research Institute for Environmental Management Technology, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan 5Laboratory for DNA Data Analysis, Center for Information Biology, National Institute of Genetics, Mishima, Shizuoka, Japan *Corresponding author: E-mail:
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[email protected]. Associate editor: Adriana Briscoe Research article Abstract Copepods are the dominant taxa in zooplankton communities of the ocean worldwide. Although bioluminescence of Downloaded from certain copepods has been known for more than a 100 years, there is very limited information about the structure and evolutionary history of copepod luciferase genes. Here, we report the cDNA sequences of 11 copepod luciferases isolated from the superfamily Augaptiloidea in the order Calanoida. Highly conserved amino acid residues in two similar repeat sequences were confirmed by the multiple alignment of all known copepod luciferases. Copepod luciferases were classified into two groups of Metridinidae and Heterorhabdidae/Lucicutiidae families based on phylogenetic analyses, with http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/ confirmation of the interrelationships within the Calanoida using 18S ribosomal DNA sequences. The large diversity in the specific activity of planktonic homogenates and copepod luciferases that we were able to express in mammalian cultured cells illustrates the importance of bioluminescence as a protective function against predators.