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Review
. 2023 Jun 5:4:uqad027.
doi: 10.1093/femsml/uqad027. eCollection 2023.

Putative nucleotide-based second messengers in archaea

Chris van der Does  1 , Frank Braun  1 , Hongcheng Ren  1 , Sonja-Verena Albers  1
Affiliations
Review

Putative nucleotide-based second messengers in archaea

Chris van der Does et al. Microlife. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Second messengers transfer signals from changing intra- and extracellular conditions to a cellular response. Over the last few decades, several nucleotide-based second messengers have been identified and characterized in especially bacteria and eukaryotes. Also in archaea, several nucleotide-based second messengers have been identified. This review will summarize our understanding of nucleotide-based second messengers in archaea. For some of the nucleotide-based second messengers, like cyclic di-AMP and cyclic oligoadenylates, their roles in archaea have become clear. Cyclic di-AMP plays a similar role in osmoregulation in euryarchaea as in bacteria, and cyclic oligoadenylates are important in the Type III CRISPR-Cas response to activate CRISPR ancillary proteins involved in antiviral defense. Other putative nucleotide-based second messengers, like 3',5'- and 2',3'-cyclic mononucleotides and adenine dinucleotides, have been identified in archaea, but their synthesis and degradation pathways, as well as their functions as secondary messengers, still remain to be demonstrated. In contrast, 3'-3'-cGAMP has not yet been identified in archaea, but the enzymes required to synthesize 3'-3'-cGAMP have been found in several euryarchaeotes. Finally, the widely distributed bacterial second messengers, cyclic diguanosine monophosphate and guanosine (penta-)/tetraphosphate, do not appear to be present in archaea.

Keywords: archaea; cyclic diadenylate; cyclic oligoadenylate; second messenger; signaling.

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Conflict of interest statement

None declared.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Structures of mononucleotide-based second messengers: (A) 3′,5′-cyclic nucleotides and (B) 2′,3′-cyclic nucleotides using 3′,5′-cyclic adenosine monophosphate and 2′,3′-cyclic adenosine monophosphate as examples.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Structures of dinucleotide-based second messengers: (A) 3′,5′-cyclic diadenosine monophosphate (c-di-AMP); (B) 2′,3′-cyclic guanosine monophosphate-adenosine monophosphate (2’,3’-cGAMP); (C) 3’,3’-cyclic guanosine monophosphate-adenosine monophosphate (3′,3′-cGAMP); and (D) diadenosine oligo (n = 2–6) phosphate (Ap2–6A). For 2’,3’-cGAMP and 3’,3’-cGAMP, the number of the isomer-determining carbon atom is highlighted in red.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Structure of an oligonucleotide-based second messenger: structure of cyclic hexa-adenylate.
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