I will be doing a poster presentation at this year’s National Shellfisheries Association Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MD (March 26-30).
I one the lodging lottery, so hotel will be paid for as long as I assist with some of the conference operations (tabling, tech for sessions, etc.).
Title and abstract submitted
Evaluating the response of Mytilus trossulus to chronic and variable heat conditions using gene expression biomarkers
Zachary Bengtsson, Olivia Cattau, Christine Mantegna, Aidan Coyle, Sarah Tanja, Matthew George, and Steven Roberts University of Washington-Seattle, School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, 1122 NE Boat Street, Room 116, Seattle, WA 98105
Planning for future climate challenges is limited by current understanding of how organisms cope with changing environmental conditions at the molecular level. For marine bivalves like the foolish mussel (Mytilus trossulus), transcriptional mechanisms which convey resilience to rising coastal temperatures and increasingly frequent heatwave events are especially important. This study investigated heat stress response in foolish mussels using quantitative PCR methods to examine the expression of heat stress-related genes under chronic and variable heat conditions. Mussels were exposed to one of three conditions: chronic heat (18°C), variable heat (cycling between 15°C and 21°C), and control (12°C). After seven days of exposure, gill tissue samples were dissected and run through RNA extraction and reverse transcription. qPCR runs were completed for each sample in duplicate using primers for heat shock protein cognate 70 (HSC70), heat shock protein 90 (HSP90), and small heat shock protein 24.1 (small HSP24.1)–protein coding genes known for their involvement in heat stress response. Preliminary results show differential expression of heat shock protein coding genes across the three treatment groups, particularly between heat exposure and control conditions. Further examination of how stress related gene expression changes under possible climate futures informs how mussels cope with environmental stress and allows managers to prioritize the mitigation of multiple stressors.