Characterization of biological pathways regulating acute cold resistance of zebrafish - experiment 1

Low temperature stress represents a major threat to the lives of both farmed and wild fish species. However, biological pathways determining the development of cold resistance in fish remain largely unknown. Zebrafish larvae at 96 hpf were exposed to lethal cold stress (10 oC) for different time periods to evaluate the adverse effects at organism, tissue and cell levels. In this study, time series RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) experiments were performed to delineate transcriptomic landscape of zebrafish larvae under cold stress and during the subsequent rewarming phase. This experiment contained four groups of samples. The controls (ctrl) were maintained at 28 oC and collected at developmental stages including 96 hpf, 97 hpf, 98 hpf, 102 hpf, 108 hpf and 132 hpf. The lethal cold stress treated samples (lc) were exposed to 10 oC for 1 h, 2 h, 6 h, 12 h and 24 h. The recovery group (re) were exposed to 10 oC for 12 h and then incubated at 28 oC for 1 h, 2 h, 6 h, 12 h and 24 h. The normal (er_nor) and abnormal (er_ab) ones after 24 h of both cold exposure and recovery were also included in RNA-seq analysis.