Quantitative proteomics reveals the mechanisms of physiological responses of marine ectotherms to environmental stressors

Abstract

Survival and growth of marine invertebrates inhabiting the tidal zone are highly affected by environmental stressors. In recent years, there have been frequent incidences of mass mortality of the aquacultured ectotherms in summer, prompting speculation about physiological responses of the ectotherms against global warming and acute temperature variations. To reveal the mechanism of acclimation in two marine ectotherms-abalone and oyster, isobaric tag-based quantitative proteomics was performed. These organisms were exposed to environmental stressors with either temporal or spatial variations and analyzed by bottom-up proteomics using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. To overcome the lack of functional annotation for marine invertebrate proteome, the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) was performed between the identified protein sequence and non-redundant reference protein database. The significantly changed proteins under environmental stress were related to energy metabolism and thermotolerance. Metabolic pathway enrichment analysis provided a plausible explanation for the correlation between differential protein expression and observed physiological responses. In summary, differential protein expression of marine ectotherms provided a clue for the stress response mechanism to meet the increased energy demand and repair the cell damage.