Project description:Common bottlenose dolphins serve as sentinels for the health of their coastal environments as they are susceptible to health impacts from anthropogenic inputs through both direct exposure and food web magnification. Remote biopsy samples have been widely used to reveal contaminant burdens in free-ranging bottlenose dolphins, but do not address the health consequences of this exposure. To gain insight into whether remote biopsies can also identify health impacts associated with contaminant burdens, we employed RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) to interrogate the transcriptomes of remote skin biopsies from 116 bottlenose dolphins from the northern Gulf of Mexico and southeastern U.S. Atlantic coasts. Gene expression was analyzed using principal component analysis, differential expression testing, and gene co-expression networks, and the results correlated to season, location, and contaminant burden. Season had a significant impact, with over 30% of genes differentially expressed between spring/summer and winter months. Geographic location exhibited lesser effects on the transcriptome, with 15% of genes differentially expressed between the northern Gulf of Mexico and the southeastern U.S. Atlantic locations. Despite a large overlap between the seasonal and geographical gene sets, the pathways altered in the observed gene expression profiles were somewhat distinct. Co-regulated gene modules and differential expression analysis both identified epidermal development and cellular architecture pathways to be expressed at lower levels in animals from the northern Gulf of Mexico. Although contaminant burdens measured were not significantly different between regions, some correlation with contaminant loads in individuals was observed among co-expressed gene modules, but these did not include classical detoxification pathways. Instead, this study identified other, possibly downstream pathways, including those involved in cellular architecture, immune response, and oxidative stress, that may prove to be contaminant responsive markers in bottlenose dolphin skin.
Project description:Archived blood samples collected during common bottlenose dolphin health assessments in the northern Gulf of Mexico from 2013 to 2018 were analyzed by RNA-seq to support and enhance the assessment of animal health. The transcriptomic data were analyzed in conjunction with the substantial pool of health and environmental data collected during health assessments to investigate the utility of transcriptomic data in overall assessment of dolphin health and/or as markers of specific health concerns.
2021-05-04 | GSE138765 | GEO
Project description:Northern Gulf of Mexico sediment samples
| PRJNA504311 | ENA
Project description:Northern Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone
Project description:Ammonia-oxidizing archaeal (AOA) amoA diversity and relative abundance in Gulf of Mexico sediments (0-2 cm) were investigated using a functional gene microarray; a two color array with a universal internal standard
Project description:Condition specific zebrafish metabolic models generated using the COBRA MetaboTools framework. The Wang et al., (2021) zebrafish genome-scale metabolic model (GEM) was constrained with experimental data from 5 days post fertilized (dpf) zebrafish to generate a 'base-model'.
In turn this 5 dpf zebrafish base-model was constrained with experimental (transcriptomics and metabolomics) data from 5 dpf zebrafish exposed to the environmental pollutant perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), at three levels - Low (0.06 uM), Medium (0.6 uM), and High (2 uM) PFOS.
The MetaboTools framework was used to construct three condition-sepcific models: Low, Medium, and High PFOS.
Key simulation predictions of effects on the carnitine shuttle and lipid metabolism were confirmed in wild-caught fish and dolphins (stranded animals) sampled from the northern Gulf of Mexico - published in Nolen et al., (2024) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cbpc.2023.109817
2024-03-04 | MODEL2403010004 | BioModels
Project description:Comparative population genomics of shrimp in the Gulf of Mexico midwater