Results and conclusions
Results
• High temperature initiates immune-related transcript expression changes in the liver
• Moderate hypoxia at 12 °C impacts hypoxia and stress-related transcript expression, but not immune-related genes
• Immune transcript expression at four weeks was less impacted as compared with the initial three-day exposure
• Persistent changes observed in epigenetic markers that facilitate thermal acclimation responses
Conclusions
• Identified several genes that can be used as biomarkers to characterize transcriptional stress response
Methods
• Total RNA extracted from flash frozen liver tissue of 360 Atlantic salmon subjected to Standard BioTools reverse transcription, preamplification and data collection workflows.
• Data collected using the 96.96 GE IFC on Biomark HD
• 41 gene target panel included genes related to the following categories:
• Heat shock response
• Stress response
• Oxidative stress response
• Cellular metabolism
• Immune response
• Transcriptional regulation (methylation)
Background
• Increasing water temperatures and de-oxygenation of the oceans as a result of global warming may negatively impact the overall health of farmed Atlantic salmon
• Few studies have looked at the combined effects of hypoxia and incremental temperature change on gene expression in salmonids
• Authors measured gene expression of various stress and immune markers in the liver, which was selected for its role in stress response, nutrient metabolism and immunity