Relationships Among the FMRFamide-like Peptides

The nuclear family of FaRPs (comprising those peptides that are, on compelling evidence, homologous) appears to be restricted to the protostome invertebrate phyla: i.e. Mollusca, Arthropoda, Annelida and Nematoda. Neither the origin nor the range of the family has been definitively established. That is, no genuine homologs have been demonstrated yet in the flatworms (though not for lack of trying), and neither the pseudocoelomate phyla related to the nematodes, nor the coelomate relatives of the annelids have been examined. The extended family of FaRPs (including peptides with little consistent sequence similarity beyond a penultimate Arg and an amidated hydrophobic residue at the C-terminal) exists in all phyla. Such a superfamily was probably first proposed by Morris et al. (1982), whose sequencing of SCPB suggested to them a class of peptides, "... the key unit for biological activity being Phe-A-Arg-B-amide (where A and B are also hydrophobic amino acids)." The ubiquity of the convergent FaRPs could reflect a conserved family of complementary heptahelical receptors requiring the arginyl residue for binding (Price and Greenberg, 1989). But another selective advantage would be the protection provided by a penultimate Arg against certain deamidating peptidases, found so far in yeast and mammals (Jackman et al., 1990).