Effect of Selenium Nanoparticles on Alternative Splicing of Rainbow Trout Head Kidney under Heat Stress

Abstract

Alternative splicing (AS) is an important post-transcriptional regulation, which can expand the functional diversity of gene products and is a mechanism for eukaryotes to cope with abiotic stress. However, there are few studies on AS events in rainbow trout under heat stress. In this study, RNA-Seq data were used to clarify the effect of selenium nanoparticles (SeNPs) on the AS events of rainbow trout head kidney under heat stress. The results showed that a total of 45,398 AS events were identified from 9804 genes, of which Skipped Exon (SE) was the most common type of AS event. Through the analysis of the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in each group, we learned that DEGs were enriched in the spliceosome, and the relevant genes were significantly changed, which promoted the occurrence of AS. We found that lysine degradation, ubiquitin mediated proteolysis, RNA degradation, protein processing in endoplasmic reticulum processing and other pathways were significantly enriched after addition of SeNPs. In addition, some immune related signaling pathways, such as the mTOR signaling pathway, interact with each other to enhance the resistance of rainbow trout to heat stress. These results indicated that AS in head kidney of rainbow trout changed under heat stress and SeNPs played a key role in alleviating heat stress for rainbow trout.

Keywords: Alternative splicing; Heat stress; Rainbow trout; Selenium nanoparticles.