Transcriptomic responses to high water temperature in Pacific salmon [2007]

Characterizing a common cellular stress response (CSR) to high water temperature across species and populations is necessary for identifying the capacity of Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) to persist in current and future climate warming scenarios, especially for populations at the southern periphery of their species' distributions. In this study, populations of wild adult pink (O. gorbuscha) and sockeye (O. nerka) salmon from the Fraser River, British Columbia, Canada, were experimentally treated to an ecologically relevant 'cool' or 'warm' water temperature to uncover common transcriptomic responses to elevated water temperature. Ninety-eight samples from three separate temperature exposure studies were analyzed on ninety-eight microarrays, using a common reference design, with multiple biological replicates for each temperature condition for each year of the experiment.