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Ocean : a visual encyclopedia
Explore the hidden depths of the ocean with this stunning visual encyclopedia for kids. Ocean: A Children's Encyclopedia reveals the secrets of the seas through stunning images and beautiful photography to engage and educate kids. From the Arctic to the Caribbean, tiny plankton to giant whales, sandy beaches to the deepest depths, Ocean: A Children's Encyclopedia let's your child discover the mysterious world beneath the waves. Packed with fun facts for kids, this encyclopedia will dazzle your child covering everything from sea creatures and ocean birds to the Great Barrier Reef. Topics are presented through a combination of fun graphics, interesting fact-boxes and high-quality photographs. Look up an individual subject for school projects or curious minds can read from beginning to end!
Book
My encyclopedia of the sea
\"Introduces the reader to facts about the sea\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
RNA-seq Analysis Reveals Alternative Splicing Under Heat Stress in Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss)
Rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) is one of the most economically important cold-water farmed species in the world, and transcriptomic studies in response to heat stress have been conducted and will be studied in depth. Alternative splicing (AS), a post-transcriptional regulatory process that regulates gene expression and increases proteomic diversity, is still poorly understood in rainbow trout under heat stress. In the present study, 18,623 alternative splicing events were identified from 9936 genes using RNA transcriptome sequencing technology (RNA-Seq) and genomic information. A total of 2731 differential alternative splicing (DAS) events were found among 2179 differentially expressed genes (DEGs). Gene ontology analysis revealed that the DEGs were mainly enriched in cellular metabolic process, cell part, and organic cyclic compound binding under heat stress. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway enrichment analysis displayed that the DEGs were enriched for 39 pathways, and some key pathways, such as lysine degradation, are involved in the regulation of heat stress in liver tissues of rainbow trout. The results were validated by qRT-PCR, confirming reliability of our bioinformatics analysis.
Journal Article
Whole Transcriptome Analysis Provides Insights into Molecular Mechanisms for Molting in Litopenaeus vannamei
Molting is one of the most important biological processes in shrimp growth and development. All shrimp undergo cyclic molting periodically to shed and replace their exoskeletons. This process is essential for growth, metamorphosis, and reproduction in shrimp. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying shrimp molting remain poorly understood. In this study, we investigated global expression changes in the transcriptomes of the Pacific white shrimp, Litopenaeus vannamei, the most commonly cultured shrimp species worldwide. The transcriptome of whole L. vannamei was investigated by RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) throughout the molting cycle, including the inter-molt (C), pre-molt (D0, D1, D2, D3, D4), and post-molt (P1 and P2) stages, and 93,756 unigenes were identified. Among these genes, we identified 5,117 genes differentially expressed (log2ratio ≥1 and FDR ≤0.001) in adjacent molt stages. The results were compared against the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) non-redundant protein/nucleotide sequence database, Swiss-Prot, PFAM database, the Gene Ontology database, and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes database in order to annotate gene descriptions, associate them with gene ontology terms, and assign them to pathways. The expression patterns for genes involved in several molecular events critical for molting, such as hormone regulation, triggering events, implementation phases, skelemin, immune responses were characterized and considered as mechanisms underlying molting in L. vannamei. Comparisons with transcriptomic analyses in other arthropods were also performed. The characterization of major transcriptional changes in genes involved in the molting cycle provides candidates for future investigation of the molecular mechanisms. The data generated in this study will serve as an important transcriptomic resource for the shrimp research community to facilitate gene and genome annotation and to characterize key molecular processes underlying shrimp development.
Journal Article
Impact of Non-Native Birds on Native Ecosystems: A Global Analysis
Introduction and naturalization of non-native species is one of the most important threats to global biodiversity. Birds have been widely introduced worldwide, but their impacts on populations, communities, and ecosystems have not received as much attention as those of other groups. This work is a global synthesis of the impact of nonnative birds on native ecosystems to determine (1) what groups, impacts, and locations have been best studied; (2) which taxonomic groups and which impacts have greatest effects on ecosystems, (3) how important are bird impacts at the community and ecosystem levels, and (4) what are the known benefits of nonnative birds to natural ecosystems. We conducted an extensive literature search that yielded 148 articles covering 39 species belonging to 18 families -18% of all known naturalized species. Studies were classified according to where they were conducted: Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, North America, South America, Islands of the Indian, of the Pacific, and of the Atlantic Ocean. Seven types of impact on native ecosystems were evaluated: competition, disease transmission, chemical, physical, or structural impact on ecosystem, grazing/ herbivory/ browsing, hybridization, predation, and interaction with other non-native species. Hybridization and disease transmission were the most important impacts, affecting the population and community levels. Ecosystem-level impacts, such as structural and chemical impacts were detected. Seven species were found to have positive impacts aside from negative ones. We provide suggestions for future studies focused on mechanisms of impact, regions, and understudied taxonomic groups.
Journal Article
Barcoding against a paradox? Combined molecular species delineations reveal multiple cryptic lineages in elusive meiofaunal sea slugs
Background
Many marine meiofaunal species are reported to have wide distributions, which creates a paradox considering their hypothesized low dispersal abilities. Correlated with this paradox is an especially high taxonomic deficit for meiofauna, partly related to a lower taxonomic effort and partly to a high number of putative cryptic species. Molecular-based species delineation and barcoding approaches have been advocated for meiofaunal biodiversity assessments to speed up description processes and uncover cryptic lineages. However, these approaches show sensitivity to sampling coverage (taxonomic and geographic) and the success rate has never been explored on mesopsammic Mollusca.
Results
We collected the meiofaunal sea-slug
Pontohedyle
(Acochlidia, Heterobranchia) from 28 localities worldwide. With a traditional morphological approach, all specimens fall into two morphospecies. However, with a multi-marker genetic approach, we reveal multiple lineages that are reciprocally monophyletic on single and concatenated gene trees in phylogenetic analyses. These lineages are largely concordant with geographical and oceanographic parameters, leading to our primary species hypothesis (PSH). In parallel, we apply four independent methods of molecular based species delineation: General Mixed Yule Coalescent model (GMYC), statistical parsimony, Bayesian Species Delineation (BPP) and Automatic Barcode Gap Discovery (ABGD). The secondary species hypothesis (SSH) is gained by relying only on uncontradicted results of the different approaches (‘minimum consensus approach’), resulting in the discovery of a radiation of (at least) 12 mainly cryptic species, 9 of them new to science, some sympatric and some allopatric with respect to ocean boundaries. However, the meiofaunal paradox still persists in some
Pontohedyle
species identified here with wide coastal and trans-archipelago distributions.
Conclusions
Our study confirms extensive, morphologically cryptic diversity among meiofauna and accentuates the taxonomic deficit that characterizes meiofauna research. We observe for
Pontohedyle
slugs a high degree of morphological simplicity and uniformity, which we expect might be a general rule for meiofauna. To tackle cryptic diversity in little explored and hard-to-sample invertebrate taxa, at present, a combined approach seems most promising, such as multi-marker-barcoding (i.e., molecular systematics using mitochondrial and nuclear markers and the criterion of reciprocal monophyly) combined with a minimum consensus approach across independent methods of molecular species delineation to define candidate species.
Journal Article
Transcriptome and Molecular Pathway Analysis of the Hepatopancreas in the Pacific White Shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei under Chronic Low-Salinity Stress
The Pacific white shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei is a euryhaline penaeid species that shows ontogenetic adaptations to salinity, with its larvae inhabiting oceanic environments and postlarvae and juveniles inhabiting estuaries and lagoons. Ontogenetic adaptations to salinity manifest in L. vannamei through strong hyper-osmoregulatory and hypo-osmoregulatory patterns and an ability to tolerate extremely low salinity levels. To understand this adaptive mechanism to salinity stress, RNA-seq was used to compare the transcriptomic response of L. vannamei to changes in salinity from 30 (control) to 3 practical salinity units (psu) for 8 weeks. In total, 26,034 genes were obtained from the hepatopancreas tissue of L. vannamei using the Illumina HiSeq 2000 system, and 855 genes showed significant changes in expression under salinity stress. Eighteen top Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways were significantly involved in physiological responses, particularly in lipid metabolism, including fatty-acid biosynthesis, arachidonic acid metabolism and glycosphingolipid and glycosaminoglycan metabolism. Lipids or fatty acids can reduce osmotic stress in L. vannamei by providing additional energy or changing the membrane structure to allow osmoregulation in relevant organs, such as the gills. Steroid hormone biosynthesis and the phosphonate and phosphinate metabolism pathways were also involved in the adaptation of L. vannamei to low salinity, and the differential expression patterns of 20 randomly selected genes were validated by quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR). This study is the first report on the long-term adaptive transcriptomic response of L. vannamei to low salinity, and the results will further our understanding of the mechanisms underlying osmoregulation in euryhaline crustaceans.
Journal Article
Comprehensive Relationship Analysis of the Long Noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) and the Target mRNAs in Response to the Infection of Edwardsiella anguillarum in European eel (Anguilla anguilla) Inoculated with Freund’s Adjuvant
Freund’s complete adjuvant (FCA) and incomplete adjuvant (FIA), generally applied in subunit fishery vaccine, have not been explored on the molecular mechanism of the non-specific immune enhancement. As long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play vital regulating roles in various biological activities, in this study, we examined the genome-wide expression of transcripts in the liver of European eel (Anguilla anguilla, Aa) inoculated with FCA and FIA (FCIA) to elucidate the regulators of lncRNAs in the process of Edwardsiella anguillarum (Ea) infection and Aa anti-Ea infection using strand-specific RNA-seq. After eels were challenged by Ea at 28 days post the first inoculation (dpi), compared to the control uninfected eels (Li group), the control infected eels (Con_Li group) showed severe bleeding, hepatocyte atrophy, and thrombi formed in the hepatic vessels of the liver, although eels inoculated with FCIA (FCIA_Li group) also formed slight thrombi in the hepatic vessels. Compared to the FCIA_Li group, there was about 10 times colony-forming unit (cfu) in the Con_Li group per 100 μg liver tissue, and the relative percent survival (RPS) of eels was 50% in FCIA_Li vs Con_Li. Using high-throughput transcriptomics, differential expressed genes (DEGs) and transcripts were identified and the results were verified using fluorescence real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). Interactions between the differential expressed lncRNAs (DE-lncRNAs) and the target DEGs were explored using Cytoscape according to their co-expression and co-location relationship. We found 13,499 lncRNAs (10,176 annotated and 3423 novel lncRNAs) between 3 comparisons of Con_Li vs Li, FCIA_Li vs Li, and FCIA_Li vs Con_Li, of which 111, 110, and 129 DE-lncRNAs were ascertained. Gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analysis of DEGs targeted by DE-lncRNAs revealed these DEGs mainly involved in single-organism cellular process in BP, membrane in CC and binding in MF, and KEGG pathways showed that the target DEGs in co-expression and co-location enriched in cell adhesion molecules. Finally, 118 DE-lncRNAs target 1161 DEGs were involved in an interaction network of 8474 co-expression and 333 co-location-related links, of which 16 DE-lncRNAs play vital roles in anti-Ea infection. Taken together, the interaction networks revealed that DE-lncRNAs underlies the process of Ea infection and Aa anti-Ea infection.
Journal Article
Hypoosmotic stress induced functional alternations of intestinal barrier integrity, inflammatory reactions, and neurotransmission along gut-brain axis in the yellowfin seabream (Acanthopagrus latus)
The gut-brain axis plays a major role in multiple metabolic regulation processes, but studies regarding its responses to environmental stress in fish are still limited. In this study, we performed transcriptome sequencing analysis and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in yellowfin seabream (Acanthopagrus latus) exposed to environments with different water salinity (freshwater: 0 ppt; low-saline water: 3 ppt; brackish water: 6 ppt). According to transcriptome analysis, 707 and 1477 genes were identified as differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between freshwater and brackish water treatments in the brain and gut, respectively. Brain DEGs were significantly enriched into a set of Gene Ontology terms and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways associated with signal transduction, most of which were downregulated. Gut DEGs were enriched into a neurotransmission-relevant KEGG pathway tryptophan metabolism, and the downregulated DEGs were enriched into the KEGG pathway focal adhesion. ELISA demonstrated significant physiological responses of the brain and gut across treatments, as determined by the concentrations of tight junction protein ZO-2, interleukin 1β, and serotonin. Under hypoosmotic stress, the functions of the gut-brain axis are altered via impairment of intestinal barrier integrity, by disturbance of gut-brain neurotransmission, and through tissue-damaging inflammatory reactions. Our work identified candidate genes which showed significantly differential expression in the gut-brain axis when yellowfin seabream encountered hypoosmotic stress, which could shed lights on the understanding of the potential osmotic regulation mechanisms of the gut-brain axis in teleost.
Journal Article