Meeting Abstract

P1.130  Thursday, Jan. 3  Seasonal and latidutinal variation in heart transcriptome profiles in the porcelain crab, Petrolisthes cinctipes TAGMOUNT, A; STILLMAN, JH*; San Francisco State University tagmount@sfsu.edu

Using cDNA microarrays, we studied seasonal and latitudinal acclimatization of transcriptome responses to thermal stress in the intertidal porcelain crab, Petrolisthes cinctipes. Because we use cardiac performance as a measure of thermal tolerance, we wish to also monitor transcriptome changes in cardiac tissue. We tested the hypothesis that seasonal and latitudinal acclimatization of transcriptome thermal response is more informative in heart than in hepatopancreas, i.e., more genes are differentially expressed across the seasons and the latitudes, in response to acute cold or heat stress. Crab specimens were collected at three different latitudes, during the summer, Bamfield, BC, and Monterey, CA and in both summer and winter at Cape Arago. At each collection, crabs were subjected to an acute heat or cold stress or were kept at constant temperature (i.e., control). Following the brief stress, crabs were placed in a recovery tank and sampled at regular intervals. For each crab sampled, heart was dissected and RNA was purified using the Trizol method then amplified using a T7 based linear amplification method. The amplified RNA was reverse transcribed in amino-allyl cDNA that were labeled with Cy3 or Cy5 dye and hybridized using a loop design on microarrays representing over 5,831 unique cDNAs. Fluorescence data were log transformed and normalized using the Lowess function. The significantly differed genes between thermal stress and control (i.e., cold versus control and heat versus control) and between thermal stresses (i.e., cold versus heat) within each sampling period were determined using R/MAANOVA. The genes that where differentially expressed represent several cellular functions, e.g., including chaperones, protein synthesis, proteasome and regulatory genes. This work was supported by NSF-IOB 0533920.