Molecular characterization of thioredoxin-1 and thioredoxin reductase activity in mud crab Scylla paramamosain

The thioredoxin (Trx) system consists of thioredoxin reductase (TrxR), Trx, and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH). TrxR is an NADPH-dependent oxidoreductase. Trx is a ubiquitous small protein with a redox-active disulfide bridge that plays important regulatory roles in some vital metabolic reactions. In this study, a cDNA sequence (SpTrx1) showing high identity to the first Trx gene was isolated from a hepatopancreas cDNA library of the mud crab Scylla paramamosain. The full-length cDNA of SpTrx1 consisted of 672 bp and contained a complete open reading frame of 318 bp encoding a polypeptide of 105 amino acids. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction analysis revealed that SpTrx1 expression was ubiquitous in various organs of S. paramamosain, including the gill, muscle, heart, hemolymph, testis, and hepatopancreas. SpTrx1 expression was upregulated significantly after Vibrio parahaemolyticus challenge: it obviously rose at 48 h and reached the highest level at 72 h. Furthermore, TrxR activity was detected in the gill, heart, muscle, hemolymph, and hepatopancreas. The relative TrxR activity in different tissues after V. parahaemolyticus injection had the same tendency in each tissue (P < 0.01) as SpTrx1 expression. The TrxR activity increased 2 h after injection, peaked at 8 h, slowly decreased from 12 to 24 h, and returned to normal levels at 48 h. The consistency of the expression between the Trx transcript and TrxR activity demonstrated that Trx was closely related to TrxR in the Trx system in S. paramamosain, suggesting that it may participate in the immune system of mud crabs.