Moult cycle specific differential gene expression profiling of the crab Portunus pelagicus

BMC Genomics

Research Article

Brian Paterson¹  Abigail Elizur²  Anna V Kuballa²  Timothy A Holton³ 

[1] Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation, 4507, Bribie Island, Queensland, Australia;Faculty of Science, Health and Education, University of the Sunshine Coast, 4556, Sippy Downs, Queensland, Australia;Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation, The University of Queensland, 4072, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia;

关键词: Arginine Kinase;    Moult Cycle;    Moult Stage;    Cuticular Protein;    Cuticle Protein;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2164-12-147

 received in 2010-07-30, accepted in 2011-03-12,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundCrustacean moulting is a complex process involving many regulatory pathways. A holistic approach to examine differential gene expression profiles of transcripts relevant to the moulting process, across all moult cycle stages, was used in this study. Custom cDNA microarrays were constructed for Portunus pelagicus. The printed arrays contained 5000 transcripts derived from both the whole organism, and from individual organs such as the brain, eyestalk, mandibular organ and Y-organ from all moult cycle stages.ResultsA total of 556 clones were sequenced from the cDNA libraries used to construct the arrays. These cDNAs represented 175 singletons and 62 contigs, resulting in 237 unique putative genes. The gene sequences were classified into the following biological functions: cuticular proteins associated with arthropod exoskeletons, farnesoic acid O-methyltransferase (FaMeT), proteins belonging to the hemocyanin gene family, lectins, proteins relevant to lipid metabolism, mitochondrial proteins, muscle related proteins, phenoloxidase activators and ribosomal proteins. Moult cycle-related differential expression patterns were observed for many transcripts. Of particular interest were those relating to the formation and hardening of the exoskeleton, and genes associated with cell respiration and energy metabolism.ConclusionsThe expression data presented here provide a chronological depiction of the molecular events associated with the biological changes that occur during the crustacean moult cycle. Tracing the temporal expression patterns of a large variety of transcripts involved in the moult cycle of P. pelagicus can provide a greater understanding of gene function, interaction, and regulation of both known and new genes with respect to the moulting process.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Kuballa et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to 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.