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Vitreoscilla Hemoglobin (VHb) Overexpression Increases Hypoxia Tolerance in Zebrafish (Danio rerio)

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Abstract

Aquaculture farming may benefit from genetically engineering fish to tolerate environmental stress. Here, we used the vector pCVCG expressing the Vitreoscilla hemoglobin (vhb) gene driven by the common carp β-actin promoter to create stable transgenic zebrafish. The survival rate of the 7-day-old F2 transgenic fish was significantly greater than that of the sibling controls under 2.5% O2 (dissolved oxygen (DO), 0.91 mg/l). Meanwhile, we investigated the relative expression levels of several marker genes (hypoxia-inducible factor alpha 1, heat shock cognate 70-kDa protein, erythropoietin, beta and alpha globin genes, lactate dehydrogenase, catalase, superoxide dismutase, and glutathione peroxidase) of transgenic fish and siblings after hypoxia exposure for 156 h. The expression profiles of the vhb transgenic zebrafish revealed that VHb could partially alleviate the hypoxia stress response to improve the survival rate of the fish. These results suggest that that vhb gene may be an efficient candidate for genetically modifying hypoxia tolerance in fish.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by “863” High-Technology Project (grant number 2007AA10Z186), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 30623001), and the Development Plan of the State Key Fundamental Research of China (grant number 2009CB118804).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Bo Guan, Yaping Wang, Zuoyan Zhu & Wei Hu

  2. Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Bo Guan

  3. College of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Hong Ma, Yuanlei Hu & Zhongping Lin

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  1. Bo Guan
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  2. Hong Ma
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  3. Yaping Wang
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Correspondence to Yuanlei Hu or Wei Hu.

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Bo Guan and Hong Ma contributed equally to this work.

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Guan, B., Ma, H., Wang, Y. et al. Vitreoscilla Hemoglobin (VHb) Overexpression Increases Hypoxia Tolerance in Zebrafish (Danio rerio). Mar Biotechnol 13, 336–344 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10126-010-9305-z

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