Novel adverse outcome pathways revealed by chemical genetics in a developing marine fish

  1. Elin Sorhus  Is a corresponding author
  2. John Patrick Incardona
  3. Tomasz Furmanek
  4. Giles W Goetz
  5. Nathaniel L Scholz
  6. Sonnich Meier
  7. Rolf Brudvik Edvardsen
  8. Sissel Jentoft
  1. Institute of Marine Research, Norway
  2. Northwest Fisheries Science Center, United States
  3. University of Oslo, Norway

Abstract

Crude oil spills are a worldwide ocean conservation threat. Fish are particularly vulnerable to the oiling of spawning habitats, and crude oil causes severe abnormalities in embryos and larvae. However, the underlying mechanisms for these developmental defects are not well understood. Here we explore the transcriptional basis for four discrete crude oil injury phenotypes in the early life stages of the commercially important Atlantic haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus). These include defects in 1) cardiac form and function, 2) craniofacial development, 3) ionoregulation and fluid balance, and 4) cholesterol synthesis and homeostasis. Our findings suggest a key role for intracellular calcium cycling and excitation-transcription coupling in the dysregulation of heart and jaw morphogenesis. Moreover, the disruption of ionoregulatory pathways sheds new light on buoyancy control in marine fish embryos. Overall, our chemical-genetic approach identifies initiating events for distinct adverse outcome pathways and novel roles for individual genes in fundamental developmental processes.

Data availability

The following data sets were generated
    1. Soerhus E
    2. Incardona J
    3. Scholz N
    4. Furmanek
    5. Meier S
    6. Edvardsen R
    7. Jentoft S
    (2016) Sequence data
    Publicly available at the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (accession no: PRJNA287744).

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Elin Sorhus

    Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, Norway
    For correspondence
    elin.sorhus@imr.no
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-3542-4201
  2. John Patrick Incardona

    Environmental and Fisheries Science Division, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, Seattle, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Tomasz Furmanek

    Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, Norway
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Giles W Goetz

    Environmental and Fisheries Science Division, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, Seattle, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Nathaniel L Scholz

    Environmental and Fisheries Science Division, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, Seattle, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Sonnich Meier

    Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, Norway
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  7. Rolf Brudvik Edvardsen

    Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, Norway
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  8. Sissel Jentoft

    Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Funding

Research Council of Norway (Project no. 234367)

  • Elin Sorhus
  • John Patrick Incardona
  • Tomasz Furmanek
  • Nathaniel L Scholz
  • Sonnich Meier
  • Rolf Brudvik Edvardsen

VISTA foundation (Project no. 6161)

  • Elin Sorhus

Institute of Marine Research (Project no. 14236)

  • Elin Sorhus
  • Tomasz Furmanek
  • Sonnich Meier
  • Rolf Brudvik Edvardsen

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: All animal experiments within the study were approved by NARA, the governmental Norwegian Animal Research Authority (http://www.fdu.no/fdu/, reference number 2012/275334-2). All methods were performed in accordance with approved guidelines.

Copyright

This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.

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https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.20707

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