Development of massive molecular biomarker analysis (‘Biomarkomics’) in non-model species: The transcriptome of Rhinella arenarum larvae exposed to organophosphorus pesticides as a case example.

VENTURINO, ANDRÉS; CESCHIN, DANILO GUILLERMO; LASCANO, CECILIA INÉS

Non-Conventional Vertebrate Species in Environmental Risk Assessment Strategies

Royal Society of Chemistry

Año: 2022;

The development of massive sequencing technologies has led to an impressive increase in data acquisition capacity and analysis. The study of differential expression of genes (DEG) in species exposed to contaminants using whole transcriptomics, enables a response pattern as a massive molecular biomarker fingerprint. This biomarkomic approach has been recently applied to the autochthonous, nonmodel amphibian Rhinella arenarum exposed to organophosphorus pesticides. The whole transcriptome study enabled the annotation of about 57-thousand gene sequences, an excellent starting point considering that R. arenarum genome remains unknown. Complementary, the massive biomarkomic analysis confirmed that a few top-regulated genes are commonly affected by contaminant exposure, while more genes are specifically affected by either organophosphorus pesticide. Interestingly, none of the target or responding genes typically recognized for organophosphorus pesticides at the biochemical or molecular levels, were found among the top-regulated genes in the biomarkomic analysis. This fact was also confirmed by a hypothesis-driven DEG analysis focused on these recognized targets for organophosphorus effects and response, except for a very few genes related to detoxification, metabolism and regulation. Our efforts are now directed to long-no coding RNA biomarkomics, as well as the extension of our transcriptomic studies to other contaminants and to other aquatic, autochthonous species.