Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Ecology of Tropical Islands, Key Laboratory of Tropical Animal and Plant Ecology of Hainan Province, College of Life Sciences, Hainan Normal University, Haikou 571158, China.
Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Ecology of Tropical Islands, Key Laboratory of Tropical Animal and Plant Ecology of Hainan Province, College of Life Sciences, Hainan Normal University, Haikou 571158, China.
Comp Biochem Physiol C Toxicol Pharmacol. 2024 May;279:109869. doi: 10.1016/j.cbpc.2024.109869. Epub 2024 Feb 28.
The elevated salinity in freshwater causes a serious threat to the survival and reproduction of freshwater organisms. The effect of salinity on embryonic development of freshwater turtles is little known. In this study, we investigated the embryonic morphology and underlining mechanism of red-eared slider (Trachemys scripta elegans) in different salinities incubated environment (2.5 ppt and 5 ppt). Results showed that salinity caused various forms of malformed embryos, including brain hypoplasia, eye defects, skeletal dysplasia, deformities of carapace, plastron, limb in the embryo. Severely, salinity could lead to embryos decease. Transcriptome analysis showed that differentially expressed genes induced by salinity primarily enriched in development pathways, metabolism pathways, disease pathways as well as cell processes through KEGG enrichment analysis. In addition, in early and middle embryonic developmental stages, the mRNA expression of apoptotic genes (p38 and bax) significantly increased, whereas anti-apoptotic gene bcl-2 decreased in salinities incubated environment. These findings demonstrated that salinity inhibited the process of embryonic development and damaged organogenesis of turtles through promoting apoptotic pathways.
淡水盐度升高对淡水生物的生存和繁殖构成严重威胁。盐度对淡水龟胚胎发育的影响知之甚少。在这项研究中，我们研究了不同盐度孵化环境（2.5 ppt 和 5 ppt）下红耳滑龟（Trachemys scripta elegans）胚胎的形态和潜在机制。结果表明，盐度导致胚胎出现各种形式的畸形，包括脑发育不全、眼睛缺陷、骨骼发育不良、甲壳、腹甲、肢体畸形。严重的情况下，盐度会导致胚胎死亡。转录组分析表明，盐度诱导的差异表达基因主要富集在发育途径、代谢途径、疾病途径以及通过 KEGG 富集分析的细胞过程。此外，在早期和中期胚胎发育阶段，凋亡基因（p38 和 bax）的 mRNA 表达显著增加，而抗凋亡基因 bcl-2 在盐度孵化环境中减少。这些发现表明，盐度通过促进凋亡途径抑制了胚胎发育过程并损害了龟类的器官发生。
