Khan Muhammad Tanveer, Dalvin Sussie, Nilsen Frank, Male Rune
Sea Lice Research Centre, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.
Sea Lice Research Centre, Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, Norway.
Biochem Biophys Rep. 2021 Oct 22;28:101156. doi: 10.1016/j.bbrep.2021.101156. eCollection 2021 Dec.
The salmon louse, is an ectoparasite of salmonid fish in the Northern Hemisphere, causing large economical losses in the aquaculture industry and represent a threat to wild populations of salmonids. Like other oviparous animals, it is likely that female lice use lipoproteins for lipid transport to maturing oocytes and other organs of the body. As an important component of lipoproteins, apolipoproteins play a vital role in the transport of lipids through biosynthesis of lipoproteins. Apolipoproteins have been studied in detail in different organisms, but no studies have been done in salmon lice. Two apolipoprotein encoding genes ( and ) were identified in the salmon lice genome. Transcriptional analysis revealed both genes to be expressed at all stages from larvae to adult with some variation, generally higher than and both at their highest levels in adult stages of the louse. In adult female louse, the and transcripts were found in the sub-epidermal tissue and the intestine. RNA interference-mediated knockdown of and in female lice resulted in reduced expression of both transcripts. knockdown female lice produced significantly less offspring than control lice, while knockdown of in female lice caused no reduction in the number of offspring. These results suggest that has an important role in reproduction in female salmon lice.
鲑鱼虱是北半球鲑科鱼类的一种体外寄生虫，给水产养殖业造成巨大经济损失，并对鲑科鱼类的野生种群构成威胁。与其他卵生动物一样，雌性虱子可能利用脂蛋白将脂质运输到成熟的卵母细胞和身体的其他器官。作为脂蛋白的重要组成部分，载脂蛋白在通过脂蛋白生物合成进行脂质运输中起着至关重要的作用。载脂蛋白已在不同生物体中得到详细研究，但尚未在鲑鱼虱中开展相关研究。在鲑鱼虱基因组中鉴定出两个载脂蛋白编码基因（和）。转录分析表明，这两个基因在从幼虫到成虫的所有阶段均有表达，但存在一些差异，通常高于，且在虱子的成虫阶段均处于最高水平。在成年雌性虱子中，和转录本在表皮下组织和肠道中被发现。RNA干扰介导的雌性虱子中和的敲低导致两种转录本的表达均降低。敲低的雌性虱子产生的后代明显少于对照虱子，而敲低雌性虱子中的则未导致后代数量减少。这些结果表明，在雌性鲑鱼虱的繁殖中具有重要作用。
