Identificação e caracterização das principais proteínas envolvidas na via de processamento de miRNAs em 8 espécies de abelhas

Abstract

Bees represent the largest group of pollinators in agriculture and pollinate more than 90% of the 107 main agricultural crops studied in the world. Despite being critical elements for the maintenance of natural and agricultural ecosystems, evidence points to a critical reduction in the population of several species of bees worldwide. With recently elucidated genomes, the species Apis mellifera, Bombus impatiens, Megachile rotundata, Dufourea novaeangliae, Eufriesea mexicana, Habropoda laboriosa, Lasioglossum albipes and Melipona quadrifasciata present a vast collection of data not yet studied, which have the capacity to make possible the identification, prevention, and mitigation of impacts that lead to the reduction of bees’ populations. Among all the possible study targets, the miRNAs present a relevant opportunity to the study of the regulation of gene expression. In the Apidae family, they were cited as behavior regulators, related to the change of functions performed by workers over time, for example. The beginning of the chain of events that leads to the effector conditions of these small non coding protein RNAs is their biogenesis. It occurs in several stages and requires a considerable number of proteins to perform its function, including: Drosha, Pasha, Dicer, Argonaute, RANBP21, Pasha, Tudor, FMR1, VIG2 and Loquacious. In this study, the objective is to identify and characterize, by in silico methods, the main proteins - Drosha, Dicer and AGO - involved in the biogenesis pathway of miRNAs, through the proteome of the 8 species. The work analyzed the conserved domains, active sites and performs phylogeny of the probable proteins in question. Two families of proteins, RNAsesIII - 8 Drosha and 16 Dicer - and 17 Argonauts were identified and analyzed. The results obtained corroborate the characterization of the proteins of the model species D. melanogaster described in the literature, in which the characterized proteins present similar or even the same disposition of domains and motifs of the catalytic site. The identification and characterization of proteins plays an introductory role, but extremely relevant, in the chain of understanding about a species. Characterizing an enzyme is, therefore, also knowing a little about its product.