title: Identification of ecdysteroid receptor-mediated signaling pathways in the hepatopancreas of the red swamp crayfish, Procambarus clarkii.
abstract: The hepatopancreas of crustaceans plays an important role in lipid and carbohydrate metabolism, digestion of food, and biogenesis. In this study, the hepatopancreas transcriptome from the red crayfish Procambarus clarkii was characterized for the first time using high-throughput sequencing, producing approximately 41.4 million reads were obtained. After de novo assembly, 57,363 unigenes with an average length of 725bp were identified, Gene Ontology analysis categorized 22,580 as being involved in biological processes, among which metabolic process and cellular process groups were the most highly enriched. A total of 8034 unigenes were assigned to 223 metabolic pathways following mapping against the Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes (KEGG) database. Ecdysteroid receptor (EcR)-mediated signaling pathways were investigated using digital gene expression (DGE) analysis following RNA interference targeting the EcR. A total of 529 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified, including 322 downregulated and 207 upregulated unigenes. Of these, 445 (84.12%) were annotated successfully by alignment with known sequences, many of which were related to catalytic activity and binding functional categories. Using KEGG enrichment analysis, 183 DEGs were clustered into 78 pathways, and six significantly enriched pathways were predicted. The expression patterns of candidate genes identified by real-time PCR were consistent with the DGE results.
authors.affiliation: College of Life Sciences, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei 230036, PR China. Electronic address: zhubaojian@ahau.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Baojian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: College of Life Sciences, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei 230036, PR China.
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.affiliation: College of Life Sciences, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei 230036, PR China.
authors.forename: Yingying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: College of Life Sciences, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei 230036, PR China.
authors.forename: Huimin
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: College of Life Sciences, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei 230036, PR China.
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: College of Life Sciences, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei 230036, PR China.
authors.forename: Cen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Qian
authors.affiliation: College of Life Sciences, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei 230036, PR China.
authors.forename: Guoqing
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.affiliation: College of Life Sciences, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei 230036, PR China.
authors.forename: Chaoliang
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D026461:Ecdysteroids / Q000378:metabolism*; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D043143:Hepatopancreas / Q000378:metabolism*; D059014:High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing / Q000379:methods*; D011987:Receptors, Steroid / Q000032:analysis*; D015398:Signal Transduction; D059467:Transcriptome
chemical_list: D026461:Ecdysteroids; D011987:Receptors, Steroid; C034808:ecdysteroid receptor
keywords: Digital gene expression; Ecdysteroid receptor; Procambarus clarkii; Signaling pathway; Transcriptome