Apoptosis is the best-studied form of programmed cell death, which is important for the development and maintenance of homeostasis within multicellular organisms.
Bcl-2 family members are major apoptosis regulations in mammalian cells. B-cell lymphoma-2 associated X protein (Bax) is a well-known proapoptotic gene that belongs to the Bcl-2 family.
Seahorse complete cDNA of HaBax got from seahorse cDNA transcriptomic database. HaBax protein characteristic and structural features were analyzed by several bioinformatics tools. The expression level of mRNA in seahorse was analyzed by qPCR technique. Conserved domain parts of the HaBax were determined by using ClustalW. The phylogenetic tree analysis was constructed according to the Neighbor-joining (NJ) method by MEGA 5.0. The 3D structure was constructed by I-TASSER server. To measure the immune response of HaBax on stimulant or pathogens, each group of seahorses was injected with lipopolysaccharide, Edwardsiella tarda , Streptococcus iniae and polyinosinic: polycytidylic acid. Then total RNA was extracted from each tissue and did the qPCR assay. The Bcl-2 like domain and transmembrane domain in the HaBax open reading frame
(ORF) were identified by using online software tools. The HaBax mRNA was highly expressed in ovary tissue compared with others. The phylogenetic analysis represented that the Hippocampus comes
Bax and HaBax have a closer relationship with each other. In response to the infection with Poly: IC, LPS administration, E. tarda infection, and S. iniae significantly increased HaBax expression respectively.
HaBax is a protein composed of 204 aa. HaBax represent high aa sequence identity with fish homologs, but low identity with reptiles, mammals and bird’s homolog. We find the evolutionary stage of that gene in vertebrate evolution. We identified the HaBax mRNA content in various tissues and assessed that was upregulated with the certain immune stimulants and pathogens. Findings of the current study represent the overall informative information related to the HaBax gene of the seahorse.