Meeting Abstract
Rainbow smelt, Osmerus mordax, show a strong thermal acclimation response to cold water, including significantly faster muscle properties in winter fish. Our goal is to understand the effects of thermal acclimation on gene expression in muscle using RNA-Seq. We examined differential gene expression in smelt fast-twitch or white myotomal muscle of cold- vs. warm- acclimated fish. Our analysis initially targets genes that code for important muscle proteins such as myosin heavy chain and light chains (MyHC, MyLCs), tropomyosin, and troponin C. We predict that expression of these genes will be affected by thermal acclimation. &beta-Actin did not differ with thermal acclimation and served as an appropriate control. Each of the four muscle proteins that we targeted originally showed a significant difference in expression in the cold- versus warm-acclimated fish. For instance, cardiac MyHC, a slow isoform of myosin, was expressed at a significantly higher level in warm- vs. cold-acclimated fish. As reported previously for liver tissues, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate-dehydrogenase and glycerol-3-phosphate-dehydrogenase expression varied significant with thermal acclimations. When controlling for actin expression, troponin C, tropomyosin, and alkali MyLC showed significant but conflicting as to the effects of thermal acclimation. Results will be presented for RNA-Seq analysis of thermal acclimation and gene expression in smelt fast-twitch myotomal muscle.
