Aestivation induces widespread transcriptional changes in the African lungfish

Yuhan Niu; Lihong Guan; Cheng Wang; Haifeng Jiang; Guogang Li; Liandong Yang

doi:10.3389/fgene.2023.1096929

Aestivation induces widespread transcriptional changes in the African lungfish

Front Genet. 2023 Jan 17:14:1096929. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2023.1096929. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Yuhan Niu^{1

2

3}, Lihong Guan^{2

4}, Cheng Wang², Haifeng Jiang², Guogang Li^{1

3

5}, Liandong Yang^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ College of Life Sciences, Qinghai Normal University, Xining, Qinghai, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China.
³ Academy of Plateau Science and Sustainability, Qinghai Normal University, Xining, China.
⁴ College of Life Sciences and Technology, Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang, Henan, China.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Biodiversity Formation Mechanism and Comprehensive Utilization of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in Qinghai Province, Qinghai Normal University, Xining, China.

Abstract

Aestivation is a special ability possessed by some animals to cope with hot and dry environments utilizing dormancy. At a macroscopic level, dormant animals stop moving and eating. At the microscopic level, the expression of a large number of genes in these animals is strictly controlled. However, little is known about what changes occur during aestivation, especially in fish. In this study, we used transcriptome analysis to examine what changes occur in the gills and lungs of the African lungfish (Protopterus annectens) during the maintenance phase of aestivation and speculated on their causes. We found that aestivating transcriptomes were highly similar between gills and lungs. We also found that some genes showed differential expression or alternative splicing, which may be associated with different organs. In addition, differential expression analysis revealed that the lungs maintained significantly higher bioactivity during aestivation, which suggests that the main respiratory organ in aestivating lungfish can transform. Our study provides a reference point for studying the relationship between aestivation and hibernation and further increases understanding of aestivation.

Keywords: Protopterus annectens; aestivation; differential gene expression; lungfish; transcriptome.

Grants and funding

This research was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB31000000), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32170480, 31972866, 31901080), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Youth Innovation Promotion Association, http://www.yicas.cn), and the Young Top-notch Talent Cultivation Program of Hubei Province. It was also supported by the Wuhan Branch, Supercomputing Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. We thank all members of the Laboratory of Fish Phylogenetics and Biogeography for collecting the samples. We thank Nan Sun and Sijia Liu for their guidance in writing the manuscript.