title: Gene expression profiles in zebrafish (Danio rerio) liver after acute exposure to okadaic acid.
abstract: Okadaic acid (OA), a main component of diarrheic shellfish poisoning (DSP) toxins, is a strong and specific inhibitor of the serine/threonine protein phosphatases PP1 and PP2A. However, not all of the OA-induced effects can be explained by this phosphatase inhibition, and controversial results on OA are increasing. To provide clues on potential mechanisms of OA other than phosphatase inhibition, here, acute toxicity of OA was evaluated in zebrafish, and changes in gene expression in zebrafish liver tissues upon exposure to OA were observed by microarray. The i.p. ED50 (6 h) of OA on zebrafish was 1.54 μg OA/g body weight (bw). Among the genes analyzed on the zebrafish array, 55 genes were significantly up-regulated and 36 down-regulated in the fish liver tissue upon exposure to 0.176 μg OA/g bw (low-dose group, LD) compared with the low ethanol control (LE). However, there were no obvious functional clusters for them. On the contrary, fish exposure to 1.760 μg OA/g bw (high-dose group, HD) yielded a great number of differential expressed genes (700 up and 285 down) compared with high ethanol control (HE), which clustered in several functional terms such as p53 signaling pathway, Wnt signaling pathway, glutathione metabolism and protein processing in endoplasmic reticulum, etc. These genes were involved in protein phosphatase activity, translation factor activity, heat shock protein binding, as well as transmembrane transporter activity. Our findings may give some useful information on the pathways of OA-induced injury in fish.
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science and Technology, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, PR China; Wageningen University and Research Centre, Centre for Water and Climate, Alterra, PO Box 47, 6700AA Wageningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Nai-sheng
authors.initials: NS
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science and Technology, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, PR China; Key Laboratory of Eutrophication and Red Tide Prevention of Guangdong Higher Education Institutes, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Hong-ye
authors.initials: HY
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science and Technology, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, PR China; Key Laboratory of Eutrophication and Red Tide Prevention of Guangdong Higher Education Institutes, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Jie-sheng
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science and Technology, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, PR China; Key Laboratory of Eutrophication and Red Tide Prevention of Guangdong Higher Education Institutes, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, P. R. China. Electronic address: tywd@jnu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Wei-dong
authors.initials: WD
authors.lastname: Yang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D015870:Gene Expression / Q000187:drug effects*; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D008099:Liver / Q000187:drug effects / Q000378:metabolism; D019319:Okadaic Acid / Q000633:toxicity*; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D015027:Zebrafish / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D019319:Okadaic Acid
keywords: Microarray; Okadaic acid; Real-time PCR; Signaling pathway; Zebrafish