title: Transcriptome assembly and expression profiling of molecular responses to cadmium toxicity in hepatopancreas of the freshwater crab Sinopotamon henanense.
abstract: Cadmium (Cd) pollution is a serious global problem, which causes irreversible toxic effects on animals. Freshwater crab, Sinopotamon henanense, is a useful environmental indicator since it is widely distributed in benthic habitats whereby it tends to accumulate Cd and other toxicants. However, its molecular responses to Cd toxicity remain unclear. In this study, we performed transcriptome sequencing and gene expression analyses of its hepatopancreas with and without Cd treatments. A total of 7.78 G clean reads were obtained from the pooled samples, and 68,648 unigenes with an average size of 622 bp were assembled, in which 5,436 were metabolism-associated and 2,728 were stimulus response-associated that include 380 immunity-related unigenes. Expression profile analysis demonstrated that most genes involved in macromolecular metabolism, oxidative phosphorylation, detoxification and anti-oxidant defense were up-regulated by Cd exposure, whereas immunity-related genes were down-regulated, except the genes involved in phagocytosis were up-regulated. The current data indicate that Cd exposure alters gene expressions in a concentration-dependent manner. Therefore, our results provide the first comprehensive S.henanense transcriptome dataset, which is useful for biological and ecotoxicological studies on this crab and its related species at molecular level, and some key Cd-responsive genes may provide candidate biomarkers for monitoring aquatic pollution by heavy metals.
authors.affiliation: School of Life Science, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, China.
authors.forename: Min
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: School of Life Science, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, China.
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ting Li
authors.affiliation: School of Life Science, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, China.
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: School of Life Science, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, China.
authors.forename: Shao
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chin Lee
authors.affiliation: School of Life Science, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, China.
authors.forename: Lan
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003386:Brachyura; D002104:Cadmium / Q000633:toxicity*; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation / Q000187:drug effects*; D063990:Gene Ontology; D043143:Hepatopancreas / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000378:metabolism*; D059014:High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; D058977:Molecular Sequence Annotation; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D059467:Transcriptome; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical / Q000633:toxicity*
chemical_list: D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical; D002104:Cadmium