Biotechnology

Biography

Biography: Vindhya Mohindra

Abstract

Under the present climate change scenario, aquatic hypoxia has become a global issue and it is pertinent to understand mechanisms that fish use in order to survive under hypoxic conditions. A growing number of genes had been reported in aquatic animals, in response to change in oxygen tension. Cysteine protease inhibitors (Cystatins) are among the genes responsible for reversible inhibition of cysteine proteases involved in many biochemical processes and immune response as well as in providing resistance to various bacterial and viral infections. In this study, two novel transcripts obtained from hypoxia tolerant Indian catfish, Clarias magur in response to hypoxia were characterized. Integrated genomic approaches, expression profiling and bioinformatics predictions showed that these transcripts belong to Cystatin superfamily and had putative cystatin/monelin like domains and might be among the novel class of proteases inhibitors (cystatin-like) and were designated as CbCystatin and CbCystatin2. Phylogentically, these were found to be clustered into family 2 cystatins clade. At transcriptional level, both the novel genes were ubiquitously expressed under normoxic conditions with highest level of expression in liver and head kidney tissues of C. magur while in response to short as well as long periods of hypoxia, their expression was significantly up-regulated in liver, spleen and head kidney tissues. These results suggested that the expression of both the novel Cystatin-like genes were greatly influenced by hypoxia in C. magur and are potentially involved in immunogenic as well as in other physiological processes that may provide adaptive significance under hypoxia in this fish