Dataset Information

Phylotranscriptomic Insights into the Diversification of Endothermic Thunnus Tunas.

ABSTRACT: Birds, mammals, and certain fishes, including tunas, opahs and lamnid sharks, are endothermic, conserving internally generated, metabolic heat to maintain body or tissue temperatures above that of the environment. Bluefin tunas are commercially important fishes worldwide, and some populations are threatened. They are renowned for their endothermy, maintaining elevated temperatures of the oxidative locomotor muscle, viscera, brain and eyes, and occupying cold, productive high-latitude waters. Less cold-tolerant tunas, such as yellowfin tuna, by contrast, remain in warm-temperate to tropical waters year-round, reproducing more rapidly than most temperate bluefin tuna populations, providing resiliency in the face of large-scale industrial fisheries. Despite the importance of these traits to not only fisheries but also habitat utilization and responses to climate change, little is known of the genetic processes underlying the diversification of tunas. In collecting and analyzing sequence data across 29,556 genes, we found that parallel selection on standing genetic variation is associated with the evolution of endothermy in bluefin tunas. This includes two shared substitutions in genes encoding glycerol-3 phosphate dehydrogenase, an enzyme that contributes to thermogenesis in bumblebees and mammals, as well as four genes involved in the Krebs cycle, oxidative phosphorylation, ?-oxidation, and superoxide removal. Using phylogenetic techniques, we further illustrate that the eight Thunnus species are genetically distinct, but found evidence of mitochondrial genome introgression across two species. Phylogeny-based metrics highlight conservation needs for some of these species.

SUBMITTER: Ciezarek AG

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6340463 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Phylotranscriptomic Insights into the Diversification of Endothermic Thunnus Tunas.

Ciezarek Adam G AG Osborne Owen G OG Shipley Oliver N ON Brooks Edward J EJ Tracey Sean R SR McAllister Jaime D JD Gardner Luke D LD Sternberg Michael J E MJE Block Barbara B Savolainen Vincent V

Molecular biology and evolution 20190101 1

Birds, mammals, and certain fishes, including tunas, opahs and lamnid sharks, are endothermic, conserving internally generated, metabolic heat to maintain body or tissue temperatures above that of the environment. Bluefin tunas are commercially important fishes worldwide, and some populations are threatened. They are renowned for their endothermy, maintaining elevated temperatures of the oxidative locomotor muscle, viscera, brain and eyes, and occupying cold, productive high-latitude waters. Les ...[more]

PMID: 30364966

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Project description:Yan-Horn Lee, Tsair-Bor Yen, Chiu-Fen Chen, and Mei-Chen Tseng (2018) Thunnus tunas in Scombridae are divided into the temperate subgenus Thunnus (bluefin group) and tropical subgenus Neothunnus (yellowfin group) species based on anatomic traits and distributions. The main purpose of this study was to examine the systematic status of T. obesus based on karyotype, cytochrome (Cyt) b gene, and 5S ribosomal DNA sequences. All T. obesus, T. albacares, T. alalunga, and T. orientalis specimens were caught in southeastern coastal waters off the main island of Taiwan. The karyotypical formula of T. obesus was 2 m + 2 st + 44 t, that of T. albacares was 2 m + 2 sm + 2 st + 42 t, that of T. alalunga was 2 m + 2 sm + 2 st + 42 t, and that of T. orientalis was 2 m + 2 sm + 44 t (m: metacentric; sm: submetacentric; st: subtelocentric; t: telocentric chromosome). According to a molecular genetics analysis for these species using Cyt b gene sequences (1141 bp), interspecific genetic distances ranged from 0.004 (T. orientalis vs. T. alalunga) to 0.038 (T. alalunga vs. T. obesus). The genealogy tree exhibited these 4 species as being categorized into 4 monophyletic groups with high bootstrapping values; T. alalunga and T. orientalis are sister species. This result suggests that the species currently allocated in Thunnus and Neothunnus might need new taxonomic characters to redefine the monophyly of the two subgenera. The sequence lengths of all cloned 5S genes from the 4 species ranged from 327-342 bp. Interspecific genetic distances ranged from 0.016 (T. orientalis vs. T. alalunga) to 0.111 (T. orientalis vs. T. albacares). The phylogenetic tree based on 5S rDNA shows T. obesus divided into 2 groups: one similar to T. albacares and the other close to T. orientalis. These results imply that Thunnus tunas have a common synapomorphic character with Scombridae fish (2n = 48) and high numbers of telocentric chromosomes (42-44). Thunnus orientalis and T. alalunga are sister based on molecular data. Thunnus obesus may have been derived from a more-complicated speciation processes.

Project description:BACKGROUND:The Pacific bluefin tuna (Thunnus orientalis) is a regionally endothermic fish that maintains temperatures in their swimming musculature, eyes, brain and viscera above that of the ambient water. Within their skeletal muscle, a thermal gradient exists, with deep muscles, close to the backbone, operating at elevated temperatures compared to superficial muscles near the skin. Their heart, by contrast, operates at ambient temperature, which in bluefin tunas can range widely. Cardiac function in tunas reduces in cold waters, yet the heart must continue to supply blood for metabolically demanding endothermic tissues. Physiological studies indicate Pacific bluefin tuna have an elevated cardiac capacity and increased cold-tolerance compared to warm-water tuna species, primarily enabled by increased capacity for sarcoplasmic reticulum calcium cycling within the cardiac muscles. RESULTS:Here, we compare tissue-specific gene-expression profiles of different cardiac and skeletal muscle tissues in Pacific bluefin tuna. There was little difference in the overall expression of calcium-cycling and cardiac contraction pathways between atrium and ventricle. However, expression of a key sarcoplasmic reticulum calcium-cycling gene, SERCA2b, which plays a key role maintaining intracellular calcium stores, was higher in atrium than ventricle. Expression of genes involved in aerobic metabolism and cardiac contraction were higher in the ventricle than atrium. The two morphologically distinct tissues that derive the ventricle, spongy and compact myocardium, had near-identical levels of gene expression. More genes had higher expression in the cool, superficial muscle than in the warm, deep muscle in both the aerobic red muscle (slow-twitch) and anaerobic white muscle (fast-twitch), suggesting thermal compensation. CONCLUSIONS:We find evidence of widespread transcriptomic differences between the Pacific tuna ventricle and atrium, with potentially higher rates of calcium cycling in the atrium associated with the higher expression of SERCA2b compared to the ventricle. We find no evidence that genes associated with thermogenesis are upregulated in the deep, warm muscle compared to superficial, cool muscle. Heat generation may be enabled by by the high aerobic capacity of bluefin tuna red muscle.

Project description:Big defensins are antimicrobial polypeptides believed to be the ancestors of ?-defensins, the most evolutionary conserved family of host defense peptides (HDPs) in vertebrates. Nevertheless, big defensins underwent several independent gene loss events during animal evolution, being only retained in a limited number of phylogenetically distant invertebrates. Here, we explore the evolutionary history of this fascinating HDP family and investigate its patchy distribution in extant metazoans. We highlight the presence of big defensins in various classes of lophotrochozoans, as well as in a few arthropods and basal chordates (amphioxus), mostly adapted to life in marine environments. Bivalve mollusks often display an expanded repertoire of big defensin sequences, which appear to be the product of independent lineage-specific gene tandem duplications, followed by a rapid molecular diversification of newly acquired gene copies. This ongoing evolutionary process could underpin the simultaneous presence of canonical big defensins and non-canonical (?-defensin-like) sequences in some species. The big defensin genes of mussels and oysters, two species target of in-depth studies, are subjected to gene presence/absence variation (PAV), i.e., they can be present or absent in the genomes of different individuals. Moreover, big defensins follow different patterns of gene expression within a given species and respond differently to microbial challenges, suggesting functional divergence. Consistently, current structural data show that big defensin sequence diversity affects the 3D structure and biophysical properties of these polypeptides. We discuss here the role of the N-terminal hydrophobic domain, lost during evolution toward ?-defensins, in the big defensin stability to high salt concentrations and its mechanism of action. Finally, we discuss the potential of big defensins as markers for animal health and for the nature-based design of novel therapeutics active at high salt concentrations.

Dataset Information

Phylotranscriptomic Insights into the Diversification of Endothermic Thunnus Tunas.

Publications

Phylotranscriptomic Insights into the Diversification of Endothermic Thunnus Tunas.

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