RT Journal Article T1 Type II Metacaspases are involved in cell stress but not in cell death in the unicellular green alga Dunaliella tertiolecta. A1 Mata, Maria Teresa A1 Palma, Armando A1 López Parages, María A1 Vázquez, Victor A1 Cheng-Sánchez, Iván A1 Sarabia-García, Francisco Ramón A1 López-Figueroa, Félix A1 Jiménez-Gámez, Carlos A1 Segovia-Azcorra, María K1 Muerte celular AB Ultraviolet radiation (UVR; 280–400 nm) has a great impact on aquatic ecosystems by affecting ecophysiological and biogeochemical pro-cesses as a consequence of the global change scenario generated by anthro-pogenic activities. We studied the effect of PAR (P)+UVA (A)+UVB (B) i.e. PAB, on the molecular physiology of the unicellular green alga Dunaliella tertio-lecta for six days. We assessed the relationship between the triggered UVR stress response and metacaspases and caspase-like (CL)activities, which are proteases denoted to participate in cell death (CD) in phytoplankton. UVR inhibited cell growth and in vivo chlorophyll a fluorescence but did not cause cell death. Western blot analyses reflected that Type-II metacaspases (MCs) are present and appear to be involved in UVR induced-cell stress but not in dark-induced CD in D. tertiolecta. Enzyme kinetics revealed that cleavage of the MCs-reporter substrates RVRR, QRR, GRR, LKR, HEK, and VLK was 10-fold higher than WEHD, DEVD, IETD, and LETD CLs-substrates. The lowest apparent Michaelis-Menten constants (KMap) corresponded to RVRRase (37.5 μM) indi-cating a high affinity by the RVRR substrate. The inhibition of enzymatic activ-ities by using inhibitors with different target sites for hydrolyses demonstrat-ed that from all of the R/ Kase activities only RVRRase was a potential candi-date for being a metacaspase. In parallel, zymograms and peptide-mass fin-gerprinting analyses revealed the identities of such Rase activities suggesting an indirect evidence of possible natural physiological substrates of MCs. We present evidence of type II-MCs not being involved in CD in D. tertiolecta, but rather in survival strategies under the stressful irradiance conditions applied in this study. PB Shared Science Publishers OG YR 2019 FD 2019 LK https://hdl.handle.net/10630/37601 UL https://hdl.handle.net/10630/37601 LA eng NO Mata MT, Palma A, García-Gómez C, López-Parages M, Vázquez V, Cheng-Sánchez I, Sarabia F, López-Figueroa F, Jiménez C, Segovia M. Type II-Metacaspases are involved in cell stress but not in cell death in the unicellular green alga Dunaliella tertiolecta. Microb Cell. 2019 Oct 7;6(11):494-508. doi: 10.15698/mic2019.11.696. PMID: 31799323; PMCID: PMC6859423 DS RIUMA. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Málaga RD 20 ene 2026