Abstract
Shellfish are widely used in coastal environments for biomonitoring of heavy metal pollution. Research on the sea slug Onchidium reevesii, an economically important benthic gastropod, is limited due to a lack of genomic resources. This study, based on Illumina sequencing, compared the transcriptomes of O. reevesii before and after cadmium exposure, and used time-series expression analysis. The molecular level stress response mechanism operating in this organism in environmental stress conditions was investigated. De novo assembly of the O. reevesii transcriptome yielded 51,007 unigenes, of which 14,774 were annotated. Time-series expression analyses resulted in clustering of most responsive transcripts into 16 statistically significant expression profiles. Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analysis based on time-series expression identified metal ion binding, synaptic transmission, and oxidative stress as important biological processes, and expression analysis identified genes related to invertebrate responses to environmental stress. Furthermore, we have generated the first transcriptome of O. reevesii, and the extensive sequence data produced will provide valuable molecular resources for study of the response of O. reevesii to cadmium exposure.
Highlights
The Onchidiidae species Onchidium reevesii is a typical benthic sea slug distributed across various coastal areas of China and other countries along the Indian-Pacific Ocean
Only the toxicological effects of copper on adult O. reevesii have been reported, and the results indicated that cadmium (Cd) and copper (Cu) levels were beyond acceptable for aquatic products (Li, 2008)
Many of the identified Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were metal ion binding proteins, synapse-associated proteins, and markers associated with environmental stress
Summary
The Onchidiidae species Onchidium reevesii is a typical benthic sea slug distributed across various coastal areas of China and other countries along the Indian-Pacific Ocean. Coastal ecosystems are constantly threatened by pollution from human settlements and their associated agricultural and industrial activities. In the past few decades, a large number of studies have shown that shellfish can accumulate heavy metals from the environment, and the heavy metal content in their tissues is generally correlated with pollution levels in the habitat (Ren et al, 2007; Sun et al, 2014). It is interesting to note that the heavy metal content of adult O. reevesii collected in the reed beach of Chongming Island, Heavy Metal Responses of Onchidium reevesii
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