Abstract
Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) is a widespread synthetic persistent organic pollutant that may enrich along the food chain and affect the growth, development, reproduction, and lipid metabolism of aquatic organisms, particularly the benthic organisms. However, the toxic effects of PFOA on the half-smooth tongue sole Cynoglossus semilaevis, a commercial benthic fish in China, have rarely been reported. Because juvenile fish are sensitive to environmental pollutants, in the present study, histological assessment and tran-scriptome sequencing were performed to determine the short-term impact of PFOA on juvenile half-smooth tongue soles. Histological analysis showed that PFOA exposure caused hepatocyte rupture, intestinal villi breakage, increased goblet cell count, and brain abnormal. Transcriptome results showed that some interesting signaling pathways, such as glycolysis/gluconeogenesis, PPAR signaling pathway and GABAergic synapse signaling pathway, were enriched after PFOA exposure. In addition, some metabolic, immune and neural genes were differentially expressed, which including ependymin, hbb1-like and gad 1, and they were up-regulated after 14 days of exposure. Transcriptome results also indicated that half-smooth tongue sole might improve energy metabolism in response to PFOA toxicity after 7 days of exposure. These findings provide a basis for studying the ecological effects of PFOA on marine benthic fishes.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program (No. 2018YFD0900301-03), and the MNR Key Laboratory of Marine Eco-Environmental Science and Technology, China (No. MEEST-2021-04).
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Zhan, M., Shi, K., Zhang, X. et al. Histological Assessment and Transcriptome Analysis Provide Insights into the Toxic Effects of Perfluorooctanoic Acid to Juvenile Half Smooth Tongue Sole Cynoglossus semilaevis. J. Ocean Univ. China 22, 1635–1648 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11802-023-5594-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11802-023-5594-5