Abstract
Aquaporins (AQPs) are integral membrane proteins that facilitate the transport of water and small solutes across cell membranes. These proteins are vital for maintaining water homeostasis in living organisms. In mammals, thirteen aquaporins have been characterized, but in crustaceans, especially penaeid shrimp, the diversity, structure, and substrate specificity of these membrane channel proteins are largely unknown. We here presented the three types of AQPs from Litopenaeus vannamei based on genome and transcriptome sequencing. Phylogenetic analysis showed that each AQP separately represented members of aquaglyceroporins, classical aquaporins, and unorthodox aquaporins, thus they were named as LvAQP3, LvAQP4, and LvAQP11. The LvAqp4 was mostly expressed in hepatopancreas, stomach, and gill, meanwhile LvAqp3 and LvAqp11 were separately predominantly expressed in intestine and muscle, respectively. To investigate possible roles of aquaporins in osmoregulation, mRNA expression changes in mainly expressed tissues were analyzed after acute exposure or long-term acclimation to different salinities. The results revealed that the expression levels of aquaporins genes were significantly decreased in most tissues (except hepatopancreas) under salinity stress, though the expression patterns were variable among isoforms and tissues. Moreover, comparative transcriptome analysis indicated the combination roles of aquaglyceroporin and amino acid metabolism related genes and pathways in response to acute salinity changes in the intestine. This study opened new windows for future investigations and provided new insights into the role of aquaporins in osmoregulation in L. vannamei.
Highlights
Aquaporins (AQPs), referred to as Major Intrinsic Proteins (MIPs), are small transmembrane channel proteins that mainly facilitate water and solute permeation across cellular membranes and have been identified in organisms spanning all kingdoms of life (Abascal et al, 2014; Finn and Cerdà, 2015)
12–15 mammalian AQPs have been identified to cluster into 13 subfamilies (AQP0–12) and divide into three groups according to their selective permeability and tertiary structure: the classical AQPs (AQP0, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 8) that are considered primarily selective to water, the aquaglyceroporins (AQP3, 7, 9, and 10), which mediate the transport of glycerol, urea, and other small non-charged solutes beside water due to their larger pore size, and the unorthodox AQPs (AQP11 and 12), the pore selectivity and function of which are still under investigation (Benga, 2012; Ishibashi et al, 2017)
This study provided valuable information for understanding the mechanism of AQPs in osmoregulation in decapod shrimps and highlighted the genes and pathways related to salinity stress in the intestine of L. vannamei
Summary
Aquaporins (AQPs), referred to as Major Intrinsic Proteins (MIPs), are small transmembrane channel proteins that mainly facilitate water and solute permeation across cellular membranes and have been identified in organisms spanning all kingdoms of life (Abascal et al, 2014; Finn and Cerdà, 2015). 12–15 mammalian AQPs have been identified to cluster into 13 subfamilies (AQP0–12) and divide into three groups according to their selective permeability and tertiary structure: the classical AQPs (AQP0, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 8) that are considered primarily selective to water, the aquaglyceroporins (AQP3, 7, 9, and 10), which mediate the transport of glycerol, urea, and other small non-charged solutes beside water due to their larger pore size, and the unorthodox AQPs ( called superaquaporins) (AQP11 and 12), the pore selectivity and function of which are still under investigation (Benga, 2012; Ishibashi et al, 2017) Crustaceans represent another excellent animal models for investigating the regulation of AQPs expression due to their wide distribution in waters of different salinities, including freshwater, marine, estuarine, and intertidal habitats with some decapod species able to move among ecotypes within their own life times (Zhang et al, 2019; Cui et al, 2021). This study provided valuable information for understanding the mechanism of AQPs in osmoregulation in decapod shrimps and highlighted the genes and pathways related to salinity stress in the intestine of L. vannamei
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