Submitted on July 27, 2006
Accepted on November 21, 2006
Insights into the immune transcriptome of the shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei: tissue-specific expression profiles and transcriptomic responses to immune challenge
Javier Robalino1, Jonas S. Almeida2, David McKillen1, Joan Colglazier1, Harold F. Trent III1, Yian Ann Chen3, Megan E. T. Peck1, Craig L Browdy4, Robert W Chapman4, Gregory W. Warr5, and Paul S. Gross5*
1 Marine Biomedicine and Environmental Sciences Center, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, United States
2 Department of Biostatistics and Applied Mathematics, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States
3 Department of Biostatistics, Bioinformatics and Epidemiology, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, United States
4 Marine Resources Research Institute, South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, Charleston, South Carolina, United States
5 Marine Biomedicine and Environmental Sciences Center, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, United States; Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, United States
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: grossp{at}musc.edu.
Infectious disease constitutes a major obstacle to the sustainability of shrimp aquaculture worldwide, and a significant threat to natural populations of shrimp and other crustacea. The study of the shrimp immune system, including the response to viral infection, has been hampered by a relative lack of molecular genetic information and of tools suitable for high throughput assessment of gene expression. In this report, the generation of a cDNA microarray encompassing 2,469 putative unigenes expressed in gills, circulating hemocytes, and hepatopancreas of Litopenaeus vannamei is described. The unigenes printed on the microarray were derived from the analyses of 7,021 expressed sequence tags obtained from standard cDNA libraries as well as from libraries generated by suppression subtractive hybridization, after challenging shrimp with a variety of immune stimuli. The general utility of the cDNA microarray was demonstrated by interrogating the array with labeled RNA from 4 different shrimp tissues (gills, hemocytes, hepatopancreas, and muscle), and by analyzing the transcriptomic response of shrimp to a lethal challenge with White Spot Syndrome Virus. Our results indicate that White Spot Syndrome Virus infection up-regulates (in the hepatopancreas) genes encoding known and potential antimicrobial effectors, while some genes involved in protection from oxidative stress were found to be down-regulated by the virus.
