Surviving in a toxic world: transcriptomics and gene expression profiling in response to environmental pollution in the critically endangered European eel

Pujolar, Jose Martin, Marino, Ilaria A.M., Milan, Massimo, Coppe, Alessandro, Maes, Gregory E., Capoccioni, Fabrizio, Ciccotti, Eleonora, Bervoets, Lieven, Covaci, Adrian, Belpaire, Claude, Cramb, Gordon, Patarnello, Tomaso, Bargelloni, Luca, Bortoluzzi, Stefania, and Zane, Lorenzo (2012) Surviving in a toxic world: transcriptomics and gene expression profiling in response to environmental pollution in the critically endangered European eel. BMC Genomics, 13. 507. pp. 1-21.

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DOI: 10.1186/1471-2164-13-507

View at Publisher Website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2164-13-5...

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Abstract

Background: Genomic and transcriptomic approaches have the potential for unveiling the genome-wide response to environmental perturbations. The abundance of the catadromous European eel (Anguilla anguilla) stock has been declining since the 1980s probably due to a combination of anthropogenic and climatic factors. In this paper, we explore the transcriptomic dynamics between individuals from high (river Tiber, Italy) and low pollution (lake Bolsena, Italy) environments, which were measured for 36 PCBs, several organochlorine pesticides and brominated flame retardants and nine metals.

Results: To this end, we first (i) updated the European eel transcriptome using deep sequencing data with a total of 640,040 reads assembled into 44,896 contigs (Eeelbase release 2.0), and (ii) developed a transcriptomic platform for global gene expression profiling in the critically endangered European eel of about 15,000 annotated contigs, which was applied to detect differentially expressed genes between polluted sites. Several detoxification genes related to metabolism of pollutants were upregulated in the highly polluted site, including genes that take part in phase I of the xenobiotic metabolism (CYP3A), phase II (glutathione-S-transferase) and oxidative stress (glutathione peroxidase). In addition, key genes in the mitochondrial respiratory chain and oxidative phosphorylation were down-regulated at the Tiber site relative to the Bolsena site.

Conclusions: Together with the induced high expression of detoxification genes, the suggested lowered expression of genes supposedly involved in metabolism suggests that pollution may also be associated with decreased respiratory and energy production.


Item ID:	30016
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1471-2164
Keywords:	Anguilla anguilla, European eel, transcriptome, microarrays, pollution
Additional Information:	© 2012 Pujolar et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Date Deposited:	23 Oct 2013 10:27
FoR Codes:	06 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 0604 Genetics > 060405 Gene Expression (incl Microarray and other genome-wide approaches) @ 40% 05 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 0501 Ecological Applications > 050199 Ecological Applications not elsewhere classified @ 40% 06 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 0602 Ecology > 060204 Freshwater Ecology @ 20%
SEO Codes:	96 ENVIRONMENT > 9608 Flora, Fauna and Biodiversity > 960807 Fresh, Ground and Surface Water Flora, Fauna and Biodiversity @ 50% 96 ENVIRONMENT > 9606 Environmental and Natural Resource Evaluation > 960699 Environmental and Natural Resource Evaluation not elsewhere classified @ 50%
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