In contrast to mammals, the blood from other vertebrates such as fish contains nucleated red cells. Using a fathead minnow (Pimephales promelas) oligonucleotide microarray, we compared altered transcripts in the liver and whole blood after exposure to environmentally relevant concentrations of perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and a mixture of seven types of perfluoro alkyl substances (PFAS), including perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). We used quantitative polymerase chain reactions and cell-based assays to confirm the main effects and found that blood responded with a greater number of altered genes than the liver. The exposure to PFAS altered similar genes with central roles in a cellular pathway in both tissues, including estrogen receptor α and peroxisome proliferator activator β and γ, indicating that the genes previously associated with PFAS exposure are differentially expressed in blood and liver. The altered transcripts are involved with cholesterol metabolism and mitochondrial function. Our data confirmed that PFAS are weak xenoestrogens and exert effects on DNA integrity. Gene expression profiling from blood samples not related with the immune system, including very-low-density lipoprotein, vitellogenin, estrogen receptor, and thyroid hormone receptor, demonstrated that blood is a useful tissue for assessing endocrine disruption in non-mammalian vertebrates. We conclude that the use of blood for non-lethal sampling in genomics studies is informative and particularly useful for assessing the effects of pollution in endangered species. Further, using blood will reduce animal use and widen the experimental design options for studying the effects of contaminant exposure on wildlife.

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The Pelibuey sheep (Ovis aries) is an indigenous breed distributed in the tropical regions of Mexico. The prolificacy of this sheep is on average from 1 to 1.5 lambs, being an important breeding characteristic that owners seek to increase with the purpose of economic improvements. New-generation RNA sequencing technology has been used to identify the genes that are expressed in the ovarian tissue of sheep that have two or more lambs per parturition, as well as to elucidate the metabolic pathways that are affected by the expression of these genes, with the purpose of better understanding the prolificacy in the sheep. In the present study, the transcriptional expression of multiparous and uniparous sheep was compared using RNA sequencing. Multiparous (M group) and uniparous (U group) sheep that had a genealogical record for three generations (M, n = 5 and U, n = 5) were selected. RNA was extracted from ovarian tissue and subsequently used to prepare the libraries that were sequenced using the Illumina NextSeq500 platform. A total of 31,575 genes were detected from the transcriptomic analysis of which 4908 were significantly expressed (p-value ≤ 0.001) in the ovary of sheep. Subsequently, a second filter was carried out to evaluate the false discovery rate (FDR) and select those genes with p-values ≤ 0.05 and values of expression ≥ 1 (log2), obtaining 354 differential expressed genes (DEG): 120 genes up-regulated and 234 genes down-regulated in the group M with respect to the group U. Through Gene Ontology (GO) and metabolic analysis, we obtained information on the function of differentially expressed genes, and its importance in the reproduction of multiparous sheep. This result suggest that genes identified in the present study participate in the development of the final stages of follicles.

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Marine gastropods of the genus Conus, comprising more than 800 species, have the characteristic of injecting worms and other prey with venom. These conopeptide toxins, highly diverse in structure and action, are highly potent and specific for their molecular targets (ion channels, receptors, and transporters of the prey’s nervous system), and thus are important research tools and source for drug discovery. Next-generation sequencing technologies are speeding up the discovery of novel conopeptides in many of these species, but only limited information is available for Conus spurius, which inhabits sandy mud. To search for new precursor conopeptides, we analyzed the transcriptome of the venous ducts of C. spurius and identified 55 putative conotoxins. Seven were selected for further study and confirmed by Sanger sequencing to belong to the M-superfamily (Sr3.M01 and Sr3.M02), A-superfamily (Sr1.A01 and Sr1.A02), O-superfamily (Sr15.O01), and Con-ikot-ikot (Sr21.CII01 and Sr22.CII02). Six of these have never been reported. To our knowledge, this report is the first to use high-throughput RNA sequencing for the study of the diversity of C. spurius conotoxins.

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