Prolonged ecological changes can affect morphometrics and gene expression profile? Focusing on Hsp-70 and NLHS-induced Hsp-70 of Artemia urmiana

Reyhaneh Ravanbakhsh; Naser Agh; Mojtaba Nouraein; Peter Bossier

doi:10.1016/j.envres.2023.117254

Prolonged ecological changes can affect morphometrics and gene expression profile? Focusing on Hsp-70 and NLHS-induced Hsp-70 of Artemia urmiana

Environ Res. 2023 Dec 1;238(Pt 2):117254. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2023.117254. Epub 2023 Sep 28.

Authors

Reyhaneh Ravanbakhsh¹, Naser Agh², Mojtaba Nouraein³, Peter Bossier⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Aquatic Biotechnology, Artemia and Aquaculture Research Institute, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran. Electronic address: r.ravanbakhsh@urmia.ac.ir.
² Department of Biology and Aquaculture, Artemia and Aquaculture Research Institute, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran.
³ Department of Plant Genetics and Production, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Maragheh, Maragheh, Iran.
⁴ Laboratory of Aquaculture and Artemia Reference Center, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium.

PMID: 37775000
DOI: 10.1016/j.envres.2023.117254

Abstract

Background: In recent years, many aquatic ecosystems, including Urmia Lake, have undergone severe ecological tensions. This lake, the largest natural habitat of the brine shrimp Artemia urmiana, has progressively desiccated and its salinity has dramatically increased over the last three decades. In the face of the long period environmental stresses, understanding the adaptation and ecological plasticity mechanisms is the most interesting challenges in genetic and applied ecology. These mechanisms may probably be driven by inducing expression of some genes involved in adaptation such as Hsp-70 and also adjusting morphological parameters. But they are yet to be understood. Hence, the present work aimed to study the mechanisms, along with testing the hypothesis that non-lethal heat shocked nauplii originating from drought period can evoke Hsp-70 expression more than those from rainy period.

Methods: This study measured and analyzed morphometrical characters of adult male and female Artemia urmiana over three decades. Then, the influence of three-decade ecological crisis on Hsp-70 and non-lethal heat shock (NLHS)-induced Hsp-70 expression levels of nauplii of Artemia urmiana habiting Urmia Lake using Real-time PCR technique, based on cyst collections in 1994 (rainy period) to 2020 (drought period), was evaluated.

Results: The morphometrics results showed that the morphological characters were significantly shrunk in 2020 compared to 1994 (CI 95%, p < 0.05). Furthermore, our results depicted that, Hsp-70 expression level was significantly upregulated in response to the prolonged ecological crisis, (CI 95%, P < 0.0001), and also interestingly, the nauplii exposed to longe-term ecological crisis (belong to 2020) were able to increase Hsp-70 expression more than other ones in response to environmental stressors including heat.

Conclusions: The present results showed the involvement of Hsp-70 in the adaptation of Artemia urmiana to long term ecological alteration at the cost of shrinking morphometric parameters.

Keywords: Artemia urmiana; Environmental stresses; Hsp-70; Morphological parameters; NLHS.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Animals
Artemia* / genetics
Artemia* / metabolism
Ecosystem*
Female
Heat-Shock Response
Male
Stress, Physiological
Transcriptome