Metallothionein-2 gene from the mandarin fish Siniperca chuatsi: cDNA cloning, tissue expression, and immunohistochemical localization

Use of metallothioneins as biomarkers for environmental quality assessment in the Gulf of Gabès (Tunisia)

“…Such increase in MT mRNA levels after Cd exposure was observed in Crassostrea virginica (Unger and Roesijadi 1993), M. galloprovincialis (Dondero et al 2005), and C. edule (Paul-Pont et al 2010). Several recent studies were interested to the MT mRNA expression as a biomarker of metal pollution instead of the MT/MTLP quantification in bivalves (Unger and Roesijadi 1993;Lemoine et al 2000;Lemoine and Laulier 2003;Dondero et al 2005;Banni et al 2007;LadharChaabouni et al 2008;Choi et al 2008;Bigot et al 2009), fishes (Tom et al 2004;Kim et al 2008;Gao et al 2009;Roesijadi et al 2009), crab (Gao et al 2011) etc., and showed an increase of MT mRNA levels after exposure to metals. Nevertheless, Chang et al (2007) showed a decrease of MT mRNA levels in gills of the clam Meretrix lusoria exposed to 200 and 1,000 μg/l of Cd during 5 days.…”

Five metal elements homeostasis-related genes in Synechogobius hasta: Molecular characterization, tissue expression and transcriptional response to Cu and Fe exposure

“…The protein alignment of S. hasta MTs showed high sequence similarities in the conserved functional domains. Their domains included the high proportion cysteine (Cys) residues at Cys-Cys or Cys-Xn-Cys (X is an amino acid other than Cys; n ¼ 1, 2, 3), similar to other reports (Knapen et al, 2005;Gao et al, 2009;Xiang et al, 2013). These cysteine clusters may show a strong affinity to metal ions (Kagi and Schaffer, 1988;Viarengo and Nott, 1993) and serve as primary chelation sites (Kagi and Schaffer, 1988).…”

“…Metallothioneins (MTs) are a group of low molecular mass protein with strong metal-binding abilities because of their rich cysteine content, which play essential biological roles in metal ion homeostasis, detoxification and cytoprotection (Kagi and Schaffer, 1988;Suzuki, 1993). The cDNA sequences of MT genes have been cloned in several fish species, such as zebrafish (Gonzalez et al, 2006), Siniperca chuatsi (Gao et al, 2009), Gobio gobio (Knapen et al, 2005), common carp (Cyprinus carpio) (Hermesz et al, 2001), icefish (Chionodraco hamatus) (Scudiero et al, 2001), pike (Esox lucius) (Kille et al, 1993) and mudskipper (Boleophthalmus pectinirostris) (Han et al, 2015), and its tissue expression profile has been explored by Han et al, 2015. However, in fish, studies are very scarce on their transcriptional responses to metal elements (Craig et al, 2009;Komjarova and Bury, 2014;Minghetti et al, 2008).…”

Subcellular distribution of Cd and Zn and MT mRNA expression in the hepatopancreas of Sinopotamon henanense after single and co-exposure to Cd and Zn

“…However it was not completely in agreement with the change of MT protein level in our previous study . It is not difficult to understand, on the one hand, that there are many complex post-transcriptional mechanisms involved in turning mRNA into protein that are not yet sufficiently well defined to be factored in the computation of protein concentrations from mRNA; on the other hand, proteins may differ substantially in their in vivo half lives (Greenbaum et al, 2003;Gao et al, 2009). Nevertheless, in our present study, it was discovered that MT mRNA expression could be induced by Zn, which was similar to the study of Pedersen et al (1998) on the shore crab Carcinus maenas and the results on Mytilus edulis by Soazig and Marc (2003), suggesting that Cd and Zn were both potent inducers of MT mRNA expression in crabs.…”