Environmental pollution assessment using Mus spretus

We evaluated the suitability of high-throughput transcriptomics approach to monitor terrestrial ecosystems. Free-living Mus spretus from several polluted sites of Huelva (Andalusia, SW Spain) were compared with mice from Doñana Biological Reserve (“Santa Olalla” lagoon (SOL) used as negative control). As most popular bioindicators, M. spretus is poorly represented in gene databases, therefore limiting the use of genomics in ecotoxicological studies. To solve this problem, we used microarrays produced from mRNAs of M. musculus. Specifically we used the One-Color Gene Expression Platform commercialized by Agilent. Gene expression in Mus spretus liver was assessed in mice from 5 sites of the Spanish Southwest. Five independent experiments were performed. The arrays were hybridized with labelled cRNA samples made from pooled livers of 9 mice per sampling site. We made 4 technichal repetitions per sample.