Project description:As a result of increasing thermal fluctuations and mean temperature values, organisms will experience conditions beyond their physiological limits. In situ adaptation to thermal regimes is mediated via directional selection and phenotypic plasticity. The latter involves physiological and morphological adjustments realized by underlying molecular mechanisms. Understanding species' adaptive capacities requires investigating these adjustive processes. Yet, acclimation through phenotypic plasticity remains largely unexplored, especially at the molecular level; For example, whether cold-adapted species inhabiting freshwater spring ecosystems have evolved adaptive mechanisms to cope with warming of freshwater habitats has, to our knowledge, never been investigated. This work reports a comprehensive proteomics study of the stenotopic species Crunoecia irrorata (Curtis, 1834) (Trichoptera: Lepistomatidae) acclimated to 10, 15 and 20 °C for 168 h. A liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS)-based shotgun proteomics approach identified molecular mechanisms underlying acclimation. We constructed a homology-based database by combining genomic and transcriptomic data from related species and quantified 1356 proteins, of which 186 were differentially expressed between temperature treatments. Through functional annotation, we identified candidate proteins facilitating, among others, trehalose accumulation, tracheal system alteration, and heat shock protein regulation, then discuss concomitant ecophysiological implications. These results provide new insights into the mechanisms of adaptive responses to warming of species inhabiting freshwater ecosystems sensitive to climate change. Further, identified candidate proteins will aid in developing targeted experiments to understand their compensatory physiology. To our knowledge, this is the first study utilizing this approach to investigate the nature of phenotypic plasticity of aquatic macroinvertebrates.
Project description:We sequenced three species of genus Himalopsyche (Himalopsyche kuldschensis, Himalopsyche tibetana, Himalopsyche japonica) Genome sequencing and assembly
Project description:The 987 probes (Japanese flounder conserved miRNAs and candidates, fish conserved miRNAs, and contro) were hybridized with two stages during Japanese flounder metamorphosis by miRNA microarray. We validated 92 miRNAs using miRNA microarray in the 17 dph and 29 dph of Japanese flounder development, and obtained 66 differertially expressed miRNAs by comparison miRNA expression patterns of the two stages. These results indicate that miRNAs might play key roles in regulating gene expression during Japanese flounder metamorphosis.