Background
Maintaining osmotic balance plays an important role in the normal operation and survival of cold-water fish. High water temperature has been proven to reduce the activity of NA+-K+-ATPase in the gill. However, the mechanism of megatemperature affect gill osmoregulation has not been fully elucidated.
Results
In this study, A.baerii, as a kind of iconic cold-water fish, was used to analyze histological alterations, plasma ion content, and transcriptional responses of gill of A.baerii, subjected to 20℃, 24℃and 28℃. We found that ROS levels in gill tissue increased and the gill damage deteriorated along with the temperature rising. Moreover, plasma Cl− levels at 28℃ were much lower than those in the other two groups, and there were no significant differences in Na+ and K+ ions among all trials. At the same time, the transcriptome data indicated that there were significant changes in injury-related pathways and genes at 24℃and 28℃. Meanwhile, GO enrichment analysis showed a large number of genes related to ion transport function changed with temperature increasing during cell processes. We discovered that as temperature increased, the expression of genes that regulate ion outflow (OCLN) and active ion absorption (AE2, NHE3, CLC-2) increased, while NKA-a expression decreased. Furthermore, the changes in osmotic regulation genes and the degree of tissue damage at 28℃ were significantly higher than those in the other two groups, indicating that the degree of heat stress-induced injury affects the osmotic regulation function of gill tissue.
Conclusions
this study reveals for the first time that the tissue damage caused by high temperature affects the function and the response mechanism of the osmotic regulation in gill of cold-water fish. It provides reference data for the study on the physiological function of cold-water fish under global warming.