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Comparative Transcriptomics of the Northern Quahog Mercenaria mercenaria and Southern Quahog Mercenaria campechiensis in Response to Chronic Heat Stress

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Abstract

The northern quahog (Mercenaria mercenaria) supports lucrative aquaculture industries in the USA. In the southeastern USA, aquacultured M. mercenaria faces increasing risks of summer die-offs from prolonged heat waves. We used a comparative transcriptomic approach to investigate the molecular responses of M. mercenaria and its southern congener, Mercenaria campechiensis, to controlled incremental heat stress over a 4-week period. Mercenaria were exposed to temperatures from 24 to 34 °C with 2.5 °C/week, after which, gill transcriptomes were de novo assembled and annotated. During the 4 weeks of chronic heat exposure, both species had the same survival rate (96%); M. mercenaria experienced body weight gain/loss depending on the originated hatcheries while M. campechiensis experienced an average net weight loss. The upregulated genes in both species included those in chaperone-mediated protein folding and regulation of cell death pathways, while the downregulated genes in both species involved in mRNA processing and splicing pathways. Compared to M. mercenaria, M. campechiensis appears to be more sensitive to prolonged heat stress as indicated by upregulating significantly more genes in coping with oxidative stress and in the protein degradation pathways, while downregulating some inhibitors of apoptosis. We discussed this finding within their ecological and evolutionary context. Our findings highlighted the potential vulnerability of the two quahogs, especially the southern quahog, to continued ocean warming.

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Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Raw sequence data for this project have been uploaded to National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) with a BioProject ID #PRJNA743680.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dr. Yanping Zhang for discussion with sample processing and RNA sequencing, and graduate student Jayme C Yee and research scientist Dr. Yuanzi Huo for help with quahog culture and feeding.

Funding

This study was supported by funds from National Sea Grant Aquaculture Program (NA18OAR4170344 and a sub-award 80794/3/1158304 for UF). Also, this study was partly supported by the Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission (ACQ-210–039-2019-UFL) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, United States Department of Agriculture (Hatch project FLA-FOR-005385).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatics Sciences, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida, 7922 NW 71st Street, Gainesville, FL, 32653, USA

    Jingwei Song, James D. Austin & Huiping Yang

  2. Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida, 110 Newins Ziegler Hall, Gainesville, FL, 32611, USA

    James D. Austin

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  1. Jingwei Song
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Contributions

JS: design of the work; acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; writing—original draft; writing—review and editing. JA: conception; interpretation of data; writing—review and editing; funding acquisition. HY: conception; design of the work; data curation; supervision; visualization; writing—original draft; writing—review and editing; funding acquisition.

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Correspondence to Huiping Yang.

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Song, J., Austin, J.D. & Yang, H. Comparative Transcriptomics of the Northern Quahog Mercenaria mercenaria and Southern Quahog Mercenaria campechiensis in Response to Chronic Heat Stress. Mar Biotechnol 24, 276–292 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10126-022-10101-7

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