Stress induced gene expression profiling in Penaeus monodon

Cultured shrimp are continuously exposed to variable environmental conditions which are associated with stress and subsequent outbreaks of disease. To investigate the effect of environmental stress on Penaeus monodon gene expression, a 3853 random cDNA microarray chip was generated with clones originating from 6 stress-enriched hemocyte libraries generated by suppression subtractive hybridization and a normal hemocyte cDNA library. Changes in temporal gene expression were analyzed from shrimp exposed to hypoxic, hyperthermic and hypoosmotic conditions. 3.1% of the cDNAs were differentially expressed in response to at least one of the environmental stressors. 70% of the differentially expressed clones had no significant sequence similarity to previously known genes. Among those genes with high identity to known sequences, the most common functional groups were immune related genes and non-LTR retrotransposons. Hierarchical clustering revealed a set of cDNAs with temporal and stressspecific gene expression profiles as well as a set of cDNAs indicating a common stress response between stressors. Hypoxic and hyperthermic stressors induced the most severe short-term response in terms of gene regulation, and the osmotic stress had the least variation in expression profiles relative to the control. These expression data agree with observed differences in shrimp physical appearance and behavior following exposure to stress conditions. Keywords: stress response, shrimp, time series An even loop hybridization design with 2 independent (replicate) loops and 12 slides per loop was used to perform a time series comparison of the gene expression profiles in juvenile shrimp subject to different types of stress. Both loops contained different pooled (3 separate shrimp) amplified RNA sample sets to provide biological replication and estimation of population variability. Being a balanced loop design, all samples were labelled with both Cy3 and Cy5. Further information on the design, refer to: (Kerr MK. Biometrics 59: 822-828, 2003).