Project description:Global climate change increasingly polarizes environments, presenting unprecedented challenges to many organisms (Smol, 2012). Polarization occurs not only in the spatial dimension, producing greater desert drought and tropical rainfall, for example, but also in the temporal dimension by making a local environment more variable over time. Many organisms survive these fluctuating environmental conditions by manifesting multiple distinct phenotypes through developmental processes that enable phenotypic plasticity (Pigliucci et al., 2006; Parsons et al., 2011). As with early development, these processes are expected to strictly regulate gene expression to canalize phenotype, despite the genetic diversity within populations (Alberch, 1982; Riska, 1986, Pigliucci et al., 1996). For plasticity to evolve, natural selection must act on genes that regulate trait variation, e.g, those conferring norms of reaction to a specific set of conditions. Despite the importance of these reaction norms for coping with environmental challenges, the genetic framework underlying phenotypic plasticity remains poorly defined, making it impossible to study how they function, differ among natural populations, and evolve. Here we used arsenic, a chemical inhibitor of salinity acclimation, to identify genes involved in transforming the gill from its freshwater to its seawater architecture in the euryhaline teleost Fundulus heteroclitus. Linear model interaction terms associated with the combined effect of arsenic and salinity challenge revealed an antagonistic relationship between arsenic exposure and salinity acclimation Exposure to arsenic during salinity acclimation yielded gene expression values similar to those observed in unexposed fish that remained in a stable environment, demonstrating that arsenic prevents changes in gene expression that normally enable osmotic plasticity. The gene sets defined by the interaction terms showed reduced inter-individual variation, suggesting unusually tight control, consistent with the hypothesis that they participate in a canalized developmental response. Evidence that natural selection acts to preserve their canalized gene expression was obtained by referencing three populations that differ in their adaptive tolerance to salinity changes (Whitehead et al., 2011). Specifically, populations adapted to withstand the widest salinity range showed both reduced transcriptional variation in genes enabling gill plasticity and an increased osmoregulatory capacity, highlighted by more stable plasma chloride concentrations in response to an osmotic challenge. Finally, we observed significantly fewer associations between genes underlying trait variation and their transcriptional regulators compared to genes that responded to only arsenic or salinity. Collectively, our results demonstrate that phenotypic plasticity converges on a molecular solution that parallels early development, in which the expression of phenotypic plasticity genes and phenotypes are canalized in part by reducing trans-regulatory complexity. 36 Sample comparisons with fish gills exposed to freshwater, freshwater to seawater for 1 hour, freshwater to seawater for 1 hour with arsenic, freshwater to seawater for 24 hours, freshwater to seawater for 24 hours with arsenic, and freshwater with arsenic for 48 hours

Project description:In this study, RNA-Seq was used to reveal the differences of molecular pathways in hepatopancreas of O. niloticus adapated to water with salinity of 8 or 16 practical salinity (psu), respectively, with fish at freshwater as the control,. Significantly changed pathways were mainly related to lipid metabolism, glucose utilization, protein consumption, osmotic regulation, signal transduction and immunology. Based on the tendencies from freshwater to 8 or 16 psu, the differentially expressed gene unions were categorized into eight unique models, which were further classified into three categories which were constant-change (either keep increasing or decreasing), change-then-stable and stable-then-change. In constant-change category, steroid biosynthesis, steroid hormone biosynthesis, fat digestion and absorption, complement and coagulation cascades were extremely significantly affected by ambient salinity (P < 0.01), indicating that these pathways play pivotal roles in molecular response to salinity acclimation from freshwater to saline water in O. niloticus, and should be the main research focus in the future. In change-then-stable category, ribosome, oxidative phosphorylation, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPAR) signaling pathway, fat digestion and absorption changed significantly with ambient increasing salinity (P < 0.01), showing these pathways were sensitive to environmental salinity variation, but had a response threshold, and would stop changing once salinity exceeds the threshold. In stable-then-change category, protein export, protein processing in endoplasmic reticulum, tight junction, thyroid hormone synthesis, antigen processing and presentation, glycolysis/gluconeogenesis and glycosaminoglycan biosynthesis - keratan sulfate were the top changed pathways (P < 0.01), suggesting that these pathways were not sensitive to salinity variation, but these pathways will respond significantly under salinity exceeding a certain level. The pathways and genes reported in this study laid on a solid foundation for future studies in understanding the underlying mechanism for salinity adaptation of freshwater fish. Examination of 3 different salinities treated hepatopancreas in Nile tilapia

Project description:In this study, RNA-Seq was used to reveal the differences of molecular pathways in hepatopancreas of O. niloticus adapated to water with salinity of 8 or 16 practical salinity (psu), respectively, with fish at freshwater as the control,. Significantly changed pathways were mainly related to lipid metabolism, glucose utilization, protein consumption, osmotic regulation, signal transduction and immunology. Based on the tendencies from freshwater to 8 or 16 psu, the differentially expressed gene unions were categorized into eight unique models, which were further classified into three categories which were constant-change (either keep increasing or decreasing), change-then-stable and stable-then-change. In constant-change category, steroid biosynthesis, steroid hormone biosynthesis, fat digestion and absorption, complement and coagulation cascades were extremely significantly affected by ambient salinity (P < 0.01), indicating that these pathways play pivotal roles in molecular response to salinity acclimation from freshwater to saline water in O. niloticus, and should be the main research focus in the future. In change-then-stable category, ribosome, oxidative phosphorylation, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPAR) signaling pathway, fat digestion and absorption changed significantly with ambient increasing salinity (P < 0.01), showing these pathways were sensitive to environmental salinity variation, but had a response threshold, and would stop changing once salinity exceeds the threshold. In stable-then-change category, protein export, protein processing in endoplasmic reticulum, tight junction, thyroid hormone synthesis, antigen processing and presentation, glycolysis/gluconeogenesis and glycosaminoglycan biosynthesis - keratan sulfate were the top changed pathways (P < 0.01), suggesting that these pathways were not sensitive to salinity variation, but these pathways will respond significantly under salinity exceeding a certain level. The pathways and genes reported in this study laid on a solid foundation for future studies in understanding the underlying mechanism for salinity adaptation of freshwater fish.

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The dynamic response to hypoosmotic stress reveals distinct stages of freshwater acclimation by a euryhaline diatom

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