Transcriptional and Translational Relationship in Environmental Stress: RNAseq and ITRAQ Proteomic Analysis Between Sexually Reproducing and Parthenogenetic Females in .

is a kind of small-bodied water flea within the family Moinidae. Similar to , could also switch its reproduction mode from parthenogenetic female (PF) to sexual female (SF) to adapt to the external environment. To uncover the mechanisms of reproductive switching in , we used both RNA-Seq and iTRAQ analyses to investigate the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and their protein products between SF and PF in . A total of 1665 DEGs (702 up-regulated, 963 down-regulated) and 600 differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) (102 up-regulated, 498 down-regulated) were detected in SF. Correlation analyses indicated that 31 genes were expressed significantly differentially at both transcriptomic and proteomic levels, including 15 up-regulated genes and 16 down-regulated genes in SF. Meanwhile, our data also showed that 528 DEPs have discordant expression at transcript level, implying post-transcriptional (including translational) regulation. These top up-regulated genes and their protein products in SF were mainly grouped into the globin-related family, vitellogenin-related family, cuticle-related family, Hsp-related family and methyltransferases-related family, which were all involved in the reproductive switching in . In contrast, a cluster of orthologous groups revealed that up-regulated genes and their protein products in PF were strongly associated with the metabolic process, which may be responsible for rapid population proliferation in .