Plasticity of gene expression according to salinity in the testis of broodstock and F1 black-chinned tilapia, Sarotherodon melanotheron heudelotii
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Aquaculture, Fisheries and Fish Science, Evolutionary Studies, Molecular Biology
- Keywords
- male reproduction, salinity, gene expression, acclimation, fish
- Copyright
- © 2014 Avarre et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- (2014) Plasticity of gene expression according to salinity in the testis of broodstock and F1 black-chinned tilapia, Sarotherodon melanotheron heudelotii. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e642v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.642v1
Abstract
The black-chinned tilapia Sarotherodon melanotheron heudelotii Rüppell 1852 (Teleostei, Cichlidae) displays remarkable acclimation capacities. When exposed to drastic changes of salinity, which can be the case in its natural habitat, it develops quick physiological responses and keeps reproducing. The present study focused on the physiological impact of salinity on male reproductive capacities, using gene expression as a proxy of acclimation process. Two series of experimental fish were investigated: the first one was composed of fish maintained in freshwater for several generations and newly acclimated to salinities of 35 and 70, whereas the second one consisted of the descendants of the latter born and raised under their native salinity. Expression patterns of 43 candidate genes previously identified from the testes of wild males was investigated in the three salinities and two generations. Twenty of them showed significant expression differences between salinities, and their predicted function revealed that most of them are involved in the osmotic tolerance of sperm cells and/or in the maintenance of sperm motility. A high level of expression variation was evidenced, especially for fish maintained in freshwater. In spite of this, gene expression patterns allowed the differentiation between fish raised in freshwater and those maintained in hypersaline water, in both generations. Altogether, the results presented here suggest that this high variability of expression is likely to ensure the reproductive success of this species under varying salinities.
Supplemental Information
Supplementary Table 1
Annotation features of the 23 non-responsive genes