Pacific salmon gill samples: fate tracking at spawning grounds
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT: The long-term viability of Pacific salmon stocks and the fisheries they support are threatened if large numbers die prematurely en-route to spawning grounds. Physiological profiles that were correlated with the fate of wild sockeye salmon during river migration were discovered using functional genomics studies on biopsied tissues. Three independent biotelemetry studies tracked the biopsied fish after tagging in the marine environment over 200 km from the Fraser River, in the lower river 69 km from the river mouth and at the spawning grounds. Salmon carrying the poor performance (unhealthy) profile in the ocean exhibited a 4-times lower probability of arriving to spawning grounds than those with a healthy genomic signature, although generally migrated into the river and to the spawning grounds faster. A related unhealthy signature observed in the river was associated with a 30% reduction in survival to spawning grounds in one of the three stocks tested. At spawning grounds, the same poor performance signature was associated with twice the pre-spawning mortality compared with healthy fish. Functional analysis revealed that the unhealthy signature, which intensified during migration to spawning grounds, was consistent with an intracellular pathogenic infection, likely a virus. These results are the first to suggest a pathogen present in salmon in the marine environment could be a major source of mortality during migration and spawning in the river. This series are gill expression profiles from the study of fish at the Weaver creek spawning grounds, and were observed for pre-spawning mortality or successful spawning. Weaver creek sockeye salmon (a late-run stock) spawn in an artificial spawning channel which has a controlled entrance and no exit, situated 100 km from the ocan. Females were dip-netted out of the entrance of the spawning channel, and placed into a sampling trough with flowing ambient water for the gill biopsy procedure and tagged with Petersen discs and returned to the spawning channel. Moribund fish were recovered daily and their gonads examined to assess whether they had spawned or not. Gene expression was assayed on the GRASP salmonid 32K cDNA microarray.
ORGANISM(S): Oncorhynchus nerka
SUBMITTER: Paul Pavlidis
PROVIDER: E-GEOD-22347 | biostudies-arrayexpress |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-arrayexpress
ACCESS DATA