Abstract
Some diatom species of the genus Pseudo-nitzschia produce the toxin domoic acid. The depuration rate of domoic acid in Pecten maximus is very low; for this reason, king scallops generally contain high levels of domoic acid in their tissues. A transcriptomic approach was used to identify the genes differentially expressed in the P. maximus digestive gland after the injection of domoic acid. The differential expression analysis found 535 differentially expressed genes (226 up-regulated and 309 down-regulated). Protein–protein interaction networks obtained with the up-regulated genes were enriched in gene ontology terms, such as vesicle-mediated transport, response to stress, signal transduction, immune system process, RNA metabolic process, and autophagy, while networks obtained with the down-regulated genes were enriched in gene ontology terms, such as response to stress, immune system process, ribosome biogenesis, signal transduction, and mRNA processing. Genes that code for cytochrome P450 enzymes, glutathione S-transferase theta-1, glutamine synthase, pyrroline-5-carboxylate reductase 2, and sodium- and chloride-dependent glycine transporter 1 were among the up-regulated genes. Therefore, a stress response at the level of gene expression, that could be caused by the domoic acid injection, was evidenced by the alteration of several biological, cellular, and molecular processes.
Highlights
Some diatom species of the genus Pseudo-nitzschia produce domoic acid, a toxin that can cause amnesic shellfish poisoning (ASP) in humans [1,2,3,4,5]
P. maximus [14,15], and the blooms of toxigenic Pseudo-nitzschia, the king scallops collected in Galicia (NW Spain) have high levels of domoic acid in their body tissues
The domoic acid content in the digestive gland accounted for 84% of the total domoic acid burden in the body tissues of P. maximus, despite the fact that the digestive gland only represented about 7% of the total weight of soft tissues
Summary
Some diatom species of the genus Pseudo-nitzschia produce domoic acid, a toxin that can cause amnesic shellfish poisoning (ASP) in humans [1,2,3,4,5]. Unlike mussels and oysters [10,11,12,13], with high domoic acid depuration rates, in the king scallop (Pecten maximus) the depuration rate of domoic acid is very low [14,15]. Due to the blooms of domoic acid-producing species of the genus Pseudo-nitzschia and the low depuration rate of P. maximus [14,15], the domoic acid concentration in this scallop is usually above the regulatory limits (20 μg of domoic acid g−1 ) in many areas [16]. There are other scallop species (Placopecten magellanicus and Argopecten purpuratus) that do not show this slow domoic acid depuration [17,18]
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