Organisms exposed to environmental stressors respond by rapidly synthesising a suite of highly conserved proteins called heat shock proteins (HSPs). Environmental stress can also enhance and/or block memory formation, with long-term memory formation requiring gene activation and protein synthesis. Thermal stress in the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis can enhance memory formation, and, in this study, the effect of thermal stress on HSP gene expression in the nervous system was investigated. Time-related expression profiles for HSP40 and HSP70 indicated rapid (<30 min) induction for both transcripts. For HSP40, induction was <20 fold relative to control and expression returned to control levels within 8 h, whereas HSP70 induction was >100 fold and expression did not return to control levels within 8 h.
Keywords: environmental stress; gene expression; learning; long-term memory; pond snail.