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Brain Injury Induced by Mercury in Common Carp: Novel Insight from Transcriptome Analysis

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Abstract

Mercury is a heavy metal which causes irreversible toxicity to fish and is detected in aquatic environment around the world. We aimed to explore the relative mechanism of mercury exposure on the brain injury. In this study, high-throughput sequencing RNA-Seq technology was carried out to analyze the changes of gene expression of brain tissues exposed to mercury. A large number of differentially expressed genes were identified. And 366 genes were up-regulated and 688 genes were down-regulated. Gene Ontology (GO) functional enrichment analysis showed that DNA-templated and transport were highly enriched in the biological process. Membrane, nucleus, and cytoplasm were highly enriched in the cellular component, and metal ion binding and DNA binding were highly enriched in molecular function. The differential genes were enriched in ferroptosis, necroptosis, calcium signaling pathway, and ion channels. Real-time quantitative reverse transcription PCR (qRT-PCR) results demonstrated the selected genes exhibited the same trends with the RNA-Seq results, which indicates the transcriptome sequencing data is reliable. Our results may provide an insightful view for the toxic effects of mercury on brain injury of common carp.

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The data used to support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Funding

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no.30972191), Jilin Province Industrial Technology Research and Development Special Project (no.2019C059-5), and Jilin Province Science and Technology Development Plan Project (no.20190201179JC).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Animal Science and Technology, Jilin Agricultural University, Changchun, 130118, China

    Yue Zhang, Yuting Lu & Yuehong Li

  2. Ministry of Education Laboratory of Animal Production and Quality Security, Jilin Agricultural University, Changchun, 130118, China

    Yue Zhang, Yuting Lu & Yuehong Li

  3. Health Monitoring and Inspection Center of Jilin Province, Changchun, 130062, China

    Peijun Zhang

  4. Heilongjiang River Fisheries Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences, Rd 43 Songfa, Daoli District, Harbin, 150070, China

    Xinchi Shang

  5. Key Laboratory of Cold Water Fish Germplasm Resources and Multiplication and Cultivation of Heilongjiang Province, Harbin, 150070, Heilongjiang, China

    Xinchi Shang

Authors
  1. Yue Zhang
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  2. Yuting Lu
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  3. Peijun Zhang
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  4. Xinchi Shang
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Contributions

Y. Z. and Y.L. designed the experiment; Y.Z., P. Z., S.X., and L.Y did the experiment; Y. Z. wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yuehong Li.

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All the experimental protocols in this study were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of Jilin Agricultural University.

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All authors agreed to submit it in its current form for consideration for publication in the journal.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Supplementary Information

ESM 1

Supplement Fig. 1 Mercury accumulation in blood and brain tissues. The data are showed as mean ± SD (n = 3). P < 0.05 indicates a significant difference between the two groups (PNG 25 kb)

High resolution image (TIF 88 kb)

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Zhang, Y., Lu, Y., Zhang, P. et al. Brain Injury Induced by Mercury in Common Carp: Novel Insight from Transcriptome Analysis. Biol Trace Elem Res 201, 403–411 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12011-022-03161-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12011-022-03161-2

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