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Transcriptomic changes in western mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis) liver following benzo[a]pyrene exposure

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Abstract

Widely distributed western mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis) has been used as a new model species for hazard assessment of environmental stressors such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). However, most of the PAH studies using G. affinis rely on targeted biomarker-based analysis, and thus may not adequately address the complexity of the toxic mechanisms of the stressors. In the present study, the whole transcriptional sequencing of G. affinis liver after exposure to a PAH model, benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) (100 μg/L), for 20 days was performed by using the HiSeq XTen sequencers. In total, 58,156,233 and 51,825,467 clean nucleotide reads were obtained in the control and BaP-exposed libraries, respectively, with average N50 lengths of 1419 bp. In addition, after G. affinis was exposed for 20 days, 169 genes were upregulated, and 176 genes were downregulated in liver. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analyses were applied to all the genes to determine the genes’ biological functions and processes. The results clearly showed that the differentially expressed genes were mainly related to immune pathways and metabolic correlation pathways. Interestingly, almost all the pathways related with the immunity were upregulated, while the metabolism pathways were downregulated. Lastly, quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) was performed to measure expressional levels of twelve genes confirmed through the DGE analysis. These results demonstrate that BaP damages immunity and enhances the consumption of all available energy storage to activate mechanisms of the detoxification in G. affinis. Up until now, the present study is the first time that a whole transcriptome sequencing analysis in the liver of G. affinis exposed to BaP has been reported.

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Funding

This work received the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21806041).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Marine Science, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, 510642, People’s Republic of China

    Yongyong Feng, Aiguo Zhou, Shulin Liu, Zhengkun Pan, Jixing Zou & Shaolin Xie

  2. Guangdong Laboratory for Lingnan Modern Agriculture, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, 510642, China

    Aiguo Zhou, Jixing Zou & Shaolin Xie

  3. Joint Laboratory of Guangdong Province and Hong Kong Region on Marine Bioresource Conservation and Exploitation, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, 510642, People’s Republic of China

    Shaolin Xie

  4. Departments of Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Pharmacy, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA

    Yue Zhang

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  1. Yongyong Feng
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Feng, Y., Zhou, A., Zhang, Y. et al. Transcriptomic changes in western mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis) liver following benzo[a]pyrene exposure. Environ Sci Pollut Res 27, 21924–21938 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-08571-0

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