According to a team of French and American scientists, including Michael E. Baker, PhD, professor in UC San Diego’s Department of Medicine, Division of Nephrology-Hypertension, enzymes that are used for steroid synthesis in snails, insects, corals, and octopuses react differently than in humans.

This study is likely to offer a new paradigm with important study consequences for studies on chemical effects on response of steroids in humans.

From Eurekalert.org:

Steroids hormones are key to many vital physiological responses in humans, ranging from anti-inflammatory agents to regulating events during pregnancy. They are also the target of many chemical pollutants, known as endocrine disruptors. As part of a program to understand the evolution of steroid hormone signaling, Laudet – along with Gabriel Markov, a student in the Institute of Functional Genomics, initially trained by Raquel Tavares at Université de Lyon, characterized the evolutionary relationships between proteins that synthesize steroids in animals. They traced the origin of such enzymes from vertebrates, insects, snails and jelly fish and interpreted these results through extensive discussions with Baker, Chantal Dauphin-Villemant at Université Paris 6, and Barbara Demeneix from the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.

Through an analysis of several invertebrate genomes, the scientists discovered that snails and insects utilize steroid-synthesizing enzymes that are not vertebrate–related, but instead belong in an invertebrate family. Moreover, these invertebrate steroidogenic enzymes have a strong evolutionary connection to enzymes that detoxify chemicals (called xenobiotics).

These findings led involved researchers to hypothesize that steroid-synthesizing enzymes arose in an independent manner from definite pathways that are used by worms and snails when it comes to detoxifying environmental chemicals.