Abstract
Genome-scale metabolic network (GSMN) has been proven to be a useful tool for the system analysis of organism metabolism and applied to deeply explore the metabolic functions or mechanisms in many organisms, including model or non-model organisms. However, the systematic studies on the metabolisms of aquatic animals are seldom reported, especially the aquatic crustaceans. In this work, we reconstructed an Eriocheir sinensis Y-organ GSMN based on the transcriptome sequencing of Y-organ, which includes 1,645 reactions, 1,885 unigenes, and 1,524 metabolites distributed in 100 pathways and 11 subsystems. Functional module and centrality analysis of the GSMN show the main metabolic functions of Y-organ. Further analysis of the differentially expressed unigenes in Y-organ after eyestalk ablation reveals that 191 genes in the network were up-regulated and 283 were down-regulated. The unigenes associated with the ecdysone synthetic pathway were all up-regulated, which is consistent with the report on the increasing secretion of ecdysone after eyestalk ablation. Besides, we compared the Y-organ GSMN with that of E. sinensis eyestalk and hepatopancreas, and we analyzed the specific metabolisms in each organ. The specific metabolisms and pathways of these three networks are closely related to their corresponding metabolic functions. The GSMN reconstructed in this work provides a new method and many novel clues for further understanding the physiological function of Y-organ. It also supplies a new platform for the investigation of the interactions among different organs in the growth process of E. sinensis.
Highlights
Eriocheir sinensis (Chinese mitten crab) is an important economic aquatic animal in China
The results showed that CYP4V18 down-regulation could lead to the increase of ecdysterone concentration, which is helpful to the ecdysis process in crustaceans
In the Genome-scale metabolic network (GSMN) of E. sinensis eyestalk, we found the synthetic reactions of sialic acid from N-acetylD-glucosamine-6-phosphate, which suggests that there are sialic acid synthesis pathway and corresponding functions in E. sinensis
Summary
Eriocheir sinensis (Chinese mitten crab) is an important economic aquatic animal in China. The research of Y-organ and ecdysone mainly focuses on the gene clone and expression. Gong et al (2014) cloned full-length cDNA sequence of a Genomic-Scale Metabolic Network Reconstruction ecdysteroid receptor gene Ers-EcR from E. sinensis Y-organs and found that it has the highest expressions in Y-organ and muscle. He et al (2013) constructed an expression vector of E. sinensis ecdysone regulation protein (ERP) using homologous reorganization and obtained the purified ERP. It is noticed that the metabolism or regulation in cells interacted in a complex biological system, in which the function of each gene is influenced by other genes or proteins. A systematic view is necessary for the function analysis and related regulation studies in Y-organ
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