Distribution of the Water-Soluble Astaxanthin Binding Carotenoprotein (Astap) in Scenedesmaceae
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marine drugs Article Distribution of the Water-Soluble Astaxanthin Binding Carotenoprotein (AstaP) in Scenedesmaceae Hiroki Toyoshima 1, Ami Miyata 1, Risako Yoshida 1, Taichiro Ishige 2, Shinichi Takaichi 3 and Shinji Kawasaki 1,3,* 1 Department of Bioscience, Tokyo University of Agriculture, 1-1-1 Sakuragaoka, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo 156-8502, Japan; [email protected] (H.T.); [email protected] (A.M.); [email protected] (R.Y.) 2 NODAI Genome Research Centre, Tokyo University of Agriculture, 1-1-1 Sakuragaoka, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo 156-8502, Japan; [email protected] 3 Department of Molecular Microbiology, Tokyo University of Agriculture, 1-1-1 Sakuragaoka, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo 156-8502, Japan; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +81-3-5477-2764 Abstract: Photooxidative stress-inducible water-soluble astaxanthin-binding proteins, designated as AstaP,were identified in two Scenedesmaceae strains, Coelastrella astaxanthina Ki-4 and Scenedesmus obtusus Oki-4N; both strains were isolated under high light conditions. These AstaPs are classified as a novel family of carotenoprotein and are useful for providing valuable astaxanthin in water-soluble form; however, the distribution of AstaP orthologs in other microalgae remains unknown. Here, we exam- ined the distribution of AstaP orthologs in the family Scenedesmaceae with two model microalgae, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and Chlorella variabilis. The expression of AstaP orthologs under photooxida- Citation: Toyoshima, H.; Miyata, A.; tive stress conditions was detected in cell extracts of Scenedesmaceae strains, but not in model algal Yoshida, R.; Ishige, T.; Takaichi, S.; strains. Aqueous orange proteins produced by Scenedesmaceae strains were shown to bind astaxanthin. Kawasaki, S. Distribution of the The protein from Scenedesmus costatus SAG 46.88 was purified. It was named ScosAstaP and found to bind Water-Soluble Astaxanthin Binding astaxanthin. The deduced amino acid sequence from a gene encoding ScosAstaP showed 62% identity Carotenoprotein (AstaP) in to Ki-4 AstaP. The expression of the genes encoding AstaP orthologs was shown to be inducible under Scenedesmaceae. Mar. Drugs 2021, 19, 349. https://doi.org/10.3390/ photooxidative stress conditions; however, the production amounts of AstaP orthologs were estimated to md19060349 be approximately 5 to 10 times lower than that of Ki-4 and Oki-4N. Academic Editors: Masashi Hosokawa Keywords: astaxanthin; Scenedesmus; Coelastrella; carotenoprotein; astaxanthin-binding protein and Hayato Maeda Received: 19 May 2021 Accepted: 18 June 2021 1. Introduction Published: 20 June 2021 Under the unfavorable conditions combined with high light irradiation, photosyn- thetic organisms feel photooxidative stress [1,2]. Plants are known to use carotenoids to Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral dissipate excess light energy. Carotenoids are distributed in many organisms, such as with regard to jurisdictional claims in chloroplasts of plants and algae, animal skins, and fish eggs, and more than 800 natural published maps and institutional affil- carotenoids have been identified [3]. They are hydrophobic; however, only a few are known iations. to be water-soluble by binding proteins. Water-soluble carotenoproteins have been identi- fied, such as astaxanthin-binding crustacyanin from crustaceans [4,5], zeaxanthin-binding GSTP1 (glutathione S-transferase like protein) from the human eye [6], lutein-binding pro- tein from silkworm [7], cyanobacterial orange carotenoid protein (OCP) [8], and eukaryotic Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. microalgal AstaP (astaxanthin binding protein) [9,10]. These water-soluble carotenopro- Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. teins did not show structural relationships with each other [9]. This article is an open access article In photosynthetic organisms, water-soluble carotenoproteins (WSCPs) have been well distributed under the terms and characterized in cyanobacteria named orange carotenoid protein (OCP) [8,11,12]. In our conditions of the Creative Commons previous study, two types of novel WSCPs were identified from the eukaryotic microalgae, Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// Coelastrella astaxanthina Ki-4 and Scenedesmus obtusus Oki-4N [9,10]. These two strains creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). were shown to produce novel astaxanthin-binding water-soluble proteins. Both AstaPs Mar. Drugs 2021, 19, 349. https://doi.org/10.3390/md19060349 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/marinedrugs Mar. Drugs 2021, 19, 349 2 of 14 belonged to the fasciclin protein family. This family is characterized as secreted and cell surface proteins; however, to our knowledge, none of the proteins have been reported to bind lipids, including carotenoids. Based on the photooxidative stress inducible profiles 1 and the potent activities toward O2 quenching with astaxanthin binding, these novel types of astaxanthin-binding proteins are proposed to be involved in a unique function of photooxidative stress protection in plants. In this study, we investigated the distribution and characteristics of WSCPs in taxonomically related Scenedesmaceae strains. 2. Results 2.1. Effect of Photooxidative Stresses on the Tested Strains Scenedesmaceae strains were obtained from culture collections, as described previ- ously [11]. S. obtusus and C. striolata were selected because they are the type species of the genera Scenedesmus and Coelastrella, respectively. Other strains were chosen as the relatively well-used research strains in the genus Coelastrella. According to the locality information in the literature, these strains were isolated from non-stressed environmental conditions, such as lakeside and peat bog [13]. The test strains showed good growth in the medium used for the Ki-4 and Oki-4N strains [10]; therefore, these strains were subjected to photooxidative stress after growing under non-stressed conditions. Strains Ki-4 and Oki-4N showed the optimum expression level of AstaP when they were grown under 0.7 M and 0.5 M NaCl stress with high light exposure conditions (800 µmol photons m−2 s−1), respectively, where the color of cells changed from green to orange [9,10]. The tested Scenedesmaceae strains’ cell color turned from green to white under the same stress conditions as Ki-4; therefore, we examined the upper limits of salt concentrations for each strain under the same high light intensity. Figure1 shows the change in cell color of the strains after one to two weeks from the start of stress treatments using the upper limit of salt concentrations for each strain under high light exposure conditions. S. obtusus and S. obliquus turned green to white under 0.3 M NaCl and 0.25 M NaCl with high light exposure conditions; therefore, these strains were stressed by 0.25 M and 0.2 M NaCl, respectively, under the high light exposure conditions. Other strains were stressed with 0.5 M NaCl (for C. vacuolata) or 0.4 M NaCl (for S. costatus and C. striolata) with high light exposure. A 1.0 g aliquot of wet cells stressed by salt with a high light exposure was suspended in 9.0 mL of 50 mM Tris-HCl buffer, pH 7.5. Cells were broken by a bead beater instrument, and the aqueous supernatants were obtained after ultracentrifugation. Strain Ki-4 and Oki- 4N produced orange supernatants with broad absorption peak at 484 nm (Table1)[ 9,10]. Except for S. obliquus, the test strains produced pale orangish or yellowish supernatants. The color of aqueous supernatants from the Scenedesmaceae strains were difficult to detect; therefore, the supernatants were concentrated by using a protein concentrator, and the colors and the absorption spectrum for each strain were shown in Figure2. The amount of pigment produced per aliquot of cells from each test strain was estimated to be less than 5–10 times lower than that of Ki-4 and Oki-4N (Table1). These orange supernatants were passed through gel-filtration column chromatogra- phy, and two major peaks were detected (Figure3). The first peaks from each test strain were detected around the HPLC retention time of 18 min, which were estimated to have a molecular weight greater than 670 kDa, and the absorption peaks were observed at approximately 454, 484, and 674 nm. These data indicated that the first peaks contained chlorophyll, which resembled that of the first peak of the strain Oki-4N described in our previous study [10]. The second major peak in each strain was detected at the HPLC retention time of 28 min (S. obtusus) or 30–35 min, which showed a broad absorption peak at 484 nm. In our previous study, AstaP orthologs were classified into two groups: glycosylated large-sized AstaPs and non-glycosylated small-sized AstaPs. The difference in the second peak retention time indicated variations in molecular weight among the test strains. Mar.Mar. Drugs Drugs 20212021, ,1919, ,x 349 FOR PEER REVIEW 3 3of of 15 14 FigureFigure 1. 1. SurvivalSurvival of of test test strains strains under salt stress conditionsconditions withwith highhigh light light exposure. exposure Salt. Salt concentra- concen- trationtions fors for each each test test strains strains were were decided decided based based on theon the upper upper limit limit of salt of salt concentrations concentrations with with high high light light (w/HL, 800 µmol photons m−2 s−1). Each test strain was cultivated under non-stressed condi- (w/HL, 800 µmol photons m−2 s−1). Each test strain was cultivated under non-stressed conditions tions and stressed by adding salt w/HL for one to two weeks as described in Materials and Methods. and