Introduction

Linker for activation of T-cells (LAT) is a key transmembrane adaptor protein in the T-cell antigen receptor (TCR) signaling pathway [1–4]. It consists of a very short extracellular domain, a transmembrane domain with two palmitoylated cysteine residues, and an intracellular tail containing several signaling phosphotyrosine motifs [1, 2, 5, 6].

The importance of LAT was first demonstrated in LAT-deficient Jurkat cell lines, JCaM2 and ANJ3. These cell lines have impaired calcium signaling and ERK phosphorylation after TCR activation [2, 7]. LAT-deficient mice show a severe block in early thymic T-cell development, resulting in a low number of peripheral T cells [4, 8, 9] and defective distal TCR signaling [2, 4, 10].

Four of the nine conserved tyrosine residues (Y132, Y171, Y191, and Y226, numbering according to human LAT throughout the manuscript) in the intracellular part of LAT were identified as important docking sites for several downstream molecules in the TCR signaling cascade, such as Grb2, Gad, and PLCγ1 [1–3, 6, 10–13]. Phosphorylation of these tyrosine residues via ZAP-70 kinase is a crucial step for triggering downstream signaling pathways [1, 2, 13].

Phosphorylated Y132 is the only motif in LAT that recruits PLCγ1. Accordingly, Y132 was shown to be essential for TCR-downstream signaling in Jurkat cells as well as in mice [2, 9, 11–14]. Surprisingly, Y132 is a suboptimal substrate for ZAP-70 due to the glycine residue in position 131 in all known LAT sequences in tetrapods [12, 15]. It has been proposed that inefficient phosphorylation of Y132 by ZAP-70 introduces a delay, which is important for ligand discrimination via a kinetic proofreading mechanism [16]. Some fish species have aspartate or glutamate residue at the position 131, which makes Y132 an optimal substrate for ZAP-70 [12]. The biological significance of the interspecies differences in the amino acid preceding Y132 is unclear, but it has been proposed that some fish may need a negatively charged amino acid at the 131 position to compensate for low kinase activity in a cold environment [12].

LAT deficiency in humans manifests with an early onset of severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) with recurrent infections [4, 17]. Patients have impaired T-cell function with a skewed response to Th2, reduced number of B cells, and increased number of γδ T cells. These conditions are lethal in the early age of patients unless bone marrow transplantation is performed [17].

LAT was described in tetrapods, fish and in two palaeognath birds (Dromaius novaehollandiae and Apteryx rowi) [12]. Surprisingly, in the avian clade Neognathae, which contains the vast majority of extant bird species, LAT orthologue has not been identified so far [12]. This opened the possibility that T-cell signaling does not rely on this adaptor protein in most birds.

We used our previous experience in the search for avian genes that are difficult to sequence and identify due to their high GC content [18]. In this study, we show that LAT is in fact encoded in the genome of neognath birds including chicken (Gallus gallus). Moreover, avian LAT contains conserved signaling motifs and is prevalently expressed in lymphoid tissues. This strongly suggests that LAT plays the same role in birds as in mammals.

Material and methods

Results

To identify LAT genes in avian genomes, we used similar approach as in our previous searches for avian GC-rich ‘hidden’ genes [18–20]. We performed homology-based searches of the SRA datasets in NCBI (mostly represented by Illumina RNA-seq data) to assemble full coding sequences of LAT in ten bird species including chicken. To further verify that these represent true LAT orthologues, we inferred a phylogenetic relationship with selected vertebrate LAT sequences. The clustering of mammalian, avian, and reptilian LAT sequences followed known evolutionary relationships (Fig 1).

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Fig 1. Phylogenetic relationship of LAT genes from birds and other vertebrates.

The maximum likelihood tree was constructed from the newly identified avian LAT sequences together with selected orthologues from other vertebrates. Bootstrap support values (percent of 500 replicates) are shown above the branches. Species with newly identified LAT sequence are in bold. The scale bar above indicates the number of substitutions per site.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283431.g001

All newly identified avian LAT sequences have high GC content and are richer in G/C stretches than their non-avian orthologues (Fig 2). These characteristics are the main cause of their resistance to PCR amplification [18]. To overcome these difficulties, we used our previously optimized PCR conditions (see Methods) to amplify the full-length chicken LAT (cLAT) coding sequence from splenic RNA, which was further confirmed by sequencing.

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Fig 2. LAT gene exhibits a high GC content and long G/C stretches in birds.

Comparison of GC content and the presence of G/C stretches in LAT genes from birds and other vertebrates. Dot plot was generated based on the coding sequences of LAT gene from vertebrate species shown in Fig 1. GC content is plotted against average length of sequence stretches containing G or C nucleotides. G/C-stretch was defined as an undisrupted sequence of at least three consecutive G or C nucleotides [18]. To allow comparison with all annotated chicken genes, a histogram showing the distribution of average G/C-stretch length in the chicken RefSeq gene category is depicted by a gray line. Chicken RefSeq genes comprise the complete set of approximately six thousand chicken coding sequences longer than 299 nucleotides. The chicken (Gallus gallus) and American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis), which is the closest relative to birds from included reptile species, are highlighted by arrows.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283431.g002

As a further line of evidence pointing to direct orthology between avian and mammalian LAT genes, we could identify synthetic gene order in several species where larger genomic contigs were available. Most clearly annotated example is kiwi (A. rowi) genomic contig NW_020447579, where LAT lies next to SPNS1, a gene whose orthologue is also genomic neighbor of human LAT.

The alignment of the amino acid sequence cLAT with human LAT (hLAT), and zebrafish (Danio rerio) LAT (zLAT) revealed that the conserved palmitoylation cysteines, phosphorylation tyrosine motifs [21] are present in all three sequences (Fig 3). cLAT includes the glycine at the position 131, which is present in hLAT, but not in the zLAT, suggesting that the PLCγ-binding tyrosine in cLAT is not an optimal substrate for ZAP70-mediated phosphorylation [12]. cLAT as well as zLAT do not contain a proline-rich motif PIPRSP, which mediates the interaction between LAT and the SH3 domain of LCK and facilitates the down-stream TCR signaling in mammals [21]. Despite this missing motif, all three LAT sequences contain numerous prolines in the N-terminal part of their intracellular domains. Overall, similarities in the conserved amino acid residues suggest that cLAT is a functional orthologue of hLAT and zLAT.

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Fig 3. cLAT contains conserved palmitoylation and signaling motifs.

The alignments of amino acid LAT sequences of human and chicken (A) and zebrafish and chicken (B) are shown. Conserved tyrosine residues are highlighted in black, glycine and/or aspartate at position 131 is highlighted in grey, conserved palmitoylated cysteines are in bold with black triangle, prolines in the proline-rich sequence (amino acids 30–100 of hLAT) are in red, proline-rich LCK-binding motif is highlighted in the hLAT sequence.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283431.g003

LAT is mostly expressed in immunological-relevant organs, such as thymus, tonsils, or spleen in mammals [1, 22]. Using the analysis of publicly available transcriptomic data, we documented a similar expression profile in chicken (Fig 4).

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Fig 4. Expression of cLAT is enriched in immune-related organs.

The expression levels of cLAT mRNA was determined in silico from SRA data (see Methods). Immune-related organs are depicted by red bars.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283431.g004

Discussion

LAT plays an instrumental role in the adaptive immune system of mammals. However, the respective gene was not identified in extant birds with the exception of a relatively small clade of Palaeognathae. In this study, we identified LAT orthologues in the genome of several birds from the numerous clades of Neognathae, including chicken. This suggests that LAT is generally present in avian species. The most probable reason, why LAT was not identified in Neognathae birds before, is the high content of GC-rich sequences. These represent the main obstacle in successful amplification and assembly of a subset of avian genes [18, 23–25]. The potential evolutionary cause for this high GC content in avian LAT is not clear. Phylogenetic analysis showed that avian LAT sequences separate from those present in mammalian, fish or reptilian genomes, as expected from the known evolutionary relationships.

Furthermore, LAT expression is enriched in the lymphoid organs in chicken similarly to mammals [26] suggesting a common function in both animal classes. On the protein level, cLAT and hLAT share striking similarities in the functionally relevant parts such as conserved cysteine and tyrosine motifs.

Overall, we conclude that missing LAT in the annotated genomes of neognath birds was caused by technical issues originating from its high GC content. The comparison of the gene expression patterns and the primary structure of the protein products in chicken, human and zebrafish revealed striking similarities. For this reason, we conclude that mammalian, fish and avian LAT genes are functional orthologues.