Revisiting the origin of interleukin 1 (IL-1) based on biological activities of IL-1 in anamniotes and their sub-functionalization in amniotes

The cytokine Interleukin 1 (IL-1) is an evolutionary innovation of vertebrates. Fish and amphibia have one IL1 gene, while mammals have two copies of IL1 , IL1A and IL1B , with distinct expression patterns and differences in their proteolytic activation. Our current understanding of the evolutionary history of IL-1 is mainly based on phylogenetic analyses, but this approach provides no information on potentially different functions of IL-1 homologs, and it remains unclear which biological activities identified for IL-1α and IL-1β in mammals are present in lower vertebrates. Here, we use in vitro and in vivo experimental models to examine the expression patterns and cleavage of IL-1 proteins from various species. We found that IL-1 in the teleost medaka shares the transcriptional patterns of mammalian IL-1α, and its processing also resembles that of mammalian IL-1α, which is sensitive to cysteine protease inhibitors specific for the calpain and cathepsin families. By contrast, IL-1 proteins in reptiles also include biological properties of IL-1β. Therefore, we propose that duplication of the ancestral IL1 gene led to segregation of expression patterns and protein processing that characterizes the two extant forms of IL-1 in mammals.