Environmental Stresses and Gene Expressions in Saxidomus purpuratus (Veneroida: Veneridae)

Abstract

The purplish Washington clam, Saxidomus purpuratus (Veneroida: Veneridae) is distributed in the coast of Korea, Japan, China and Russia. The clam inhabits in the sandy mud between intertidal zone and 40 m depth of water. This species is one of the important commercial bivalves in Korea but the total amount of catching has been decreasing robustly and approximately 80% of catching amount decreased in 2014 comparing with 1990s. To conserve the marine resources and investigate the biological responses to the environmental stresses in Saxidomus purpuratus, the molecular approaches using genes and gene expression changes were attempted. To find out the differentially expressed genes against the environmental stresses like as seawater temperature, salinity and dissolved oxygen, we plan to expose the clam to those stressors for 24 or 48 hrs. The oligo microarray of Saxidomus purpuratus would be used for exploring the differentially expressed genes (DEG) after exposure to the stress factors and the gene functions as well as transcriptional changes of DEG will be further studied for the effects of the stressors on Saxidomus purpuratus at the molecular level. of the important commercial bivalves in Korea but the total amount of catching has been decreasing robustly and approximately 80% of catching amount decreased in 2014 comparing with 1990s. To conserve the marine resources and investigate the biological responses to the environmental stresses in Saxidomus purpuratus, the molecular approaches using genes and gene expression changes were attempted. To find out the differentially expressed genes against the environmental stresses like as seawater temperature, salinity and dissolved oxygen, we plan to expose the clam to those stressors for 24 or 48 hrs. The oligo microarray of Saxidomus purpuratus would be used for exploring the differentially expressed genes (DEG) after exposure to the stress factors and the gene functions as well as transcriptional changes of DEG will be further studied for the effects of the stressors on Saxidomus purpuratus at the molecular level.