[The plate in the zone of oocyte and germinal epithelium contact in scyphomedusa Aurelia aurita binds antibodies to ZP-domain-containing protein mesoglein]

Abstract

Cnidaria are lower multicellular animals with the body consisting of two epithelial layers. An extracellular substance--mesoglea--is situated between epidermal and gastrodermal layers of these animals. Mesoglein is one of the major mesogleal proteins of adult medusa of Scyphozoan jellyfish Aurelia aurita. Search for the known domains in mesoglein amino acid sequence reveals prominent zona pellucida (ZP) domain (which was found at first in the mammal oocyte zona pellucida proteins), so the protein belongs to ZP family of extracellular matrix proteins and it is an early metazoan member of ZP-domain-containing protein family. However, nothing is known about oogenesis related ZP-domain proteins in the lower multicellular animals. Oogenesis in Scyphozoa is described poorly. In this work morphological features of the zone in contact area between the oocyte and the germinal epithelium were investigated in semi-fine sections: To make it more convenient we identified seven stages according to the oocyte size and the structure found in this area was named the plate. It was shown that the components of the plate bound specifically the antibodies against mesoglein. So it seems the plate material contains ZP-domain proteins. Electrophoresis and immunoblot results give evidence that the proteins immunologically related to mesoglein have a higher molecular mass. It might be due to either the posttranslational modifications of the precursors or that they represent other proteins of ZP-domain family in Cnidaria.