Transcriptional response of Monodonta labio to air exposure

Monodonta labio is exposed to prolonged periods of air exposure due to the complexity and variability of the intertidal environment, particularly the cyclical rise and fall of the tides. However, current research tends to focus on changing temperature and salinity rather than atmospheric exposure. In this study, RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) was used to analyze gene expression levels at different times of air exposure in the intertidal mollusc M. labio . Transcriptome analysis of nine individuals yielded 420.81 Mb of clean data, and the number of clean reads mapped to the genome ranged from 62.91% to 90.96%. In comparison with the control group, the 2 days and 5 days air exposure stress group groups showed 50 and 940 differentially expressed genes (DEGs), respectively. Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analysis revealed that the DEGs were significantly enriched in enzyme activity, catalytic activity. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment revealed that the DEGs were significantly enriched in immune response, Apoptosis. Several key genes ( BRAF , RAN , COL6A , DNAJA1 ) were related to air exposure. Among them, RAN , COL6A , DNAJA1 were differentially expressed on 2 day air exposure compared to 5 day air exposure, and BRAF was differentially expressed in all three groups. Eight differentially expressed genes were randomly selected for qRT-PCR validation, and the results showed that the transcriptomic data were of high confidence.