Plant & Animal Genomes XVI Conference Plant & Animal Genomes XVI ConferenceJanuary 12-16, 2008
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA
Takashi Aoki , Tomokazu Takano , Hidehiro Kondo , Ikuo Hirono
Japanese flounder (Paralichthys olivaceus), red sea bream (Pagrus major) and yellowtail (Seriola quinquiradiata) are commercially important marine fish species cultured in Japan with a combined total production of 231 metric tones amounting to about 1.4 billion dollars in 2006. Like other cultured species however, these fishes are beset with disease problems and therefore, there is a need to understand the host-pathogen mechanisms at the molecular level to come up with effective means to combat the diseases. The use of transcriptomics, particularly microarray analysis, is an emerging technique that is increasingly employed for “biomarking” in support of drug and vaccine development and mechanistic studies. Here, we present the gene expression profile of the kidney cells of the 3 species following stimulation with Edwardsiella tarda, lipopolysaccharide (LPS), and concanavalin A (conA) using EST analysis and a cDNA microarray platform. EST clones generated for Japanese flounder, red sea bream and yellowtail were about 5,000, 3,100 and 2,600 clones, respectively exhibiting various biodefense-related genes. cDNA microarray developed from these ESTs revealed fish specific biodefense-related gene regulation by said immunostimulants. For Japanese flounder, resistant strains showed 2-fold up-regulation of antigen presentation-related genes following E. tarda infection as compared to sensitive strains. For the yellowtail, 22 immune-related genes have been mostly up-regulated by LPS rather than conA including cytokines, chemokines, cytokine receptors and immunoglobulins. ConA on the other hand down-regulated the expression of many genes at 24 h. Overall, our study shows that transcriptomics such as microarray is an effective biomarker tool in studying host-pathogen relationships and possibly for drug development.