Population-specific transcriptional plasticity and sub-lethal thermal thresholds in developing lake sturgeon, Acipenser fulvescens
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Changing temperatures elevate threats to physiological function in endangered freshwater species such as the lake sturgeon, Acipenser fulvescens, especially throughout vulnerable periods of early development. If temperatures breach sub-lethal thresholds, transcriptomic plasticity and acclimation capacity and a reduction of protein level responses may be diminished, increasing the vulnerability of lake sturgeon to additional environmental stressors. My thesis research investigated the effects of changing temperatures on the physiology of developing lake sturgeon from Manitoba, Canada. A common garden strategy was employed, where lake sturgeon from northern and southern populations within Manitoba were reared at equivalent and environmentally-relevant temperatures. Lake sturgeon demonstrated acclimation-specific effects on thermal tolerance related phenotypes including morphology, metabolic rate, critical thermal maximum, transcriptional responses, mortality and transcriptional responses to cold stress later in life with relative performance in many traits declining as acclimatory temperatures increased. Many of the above phenotypic responses were population-specific, with lower thermal maxima and sub-lethal thermal thresholds in the northern population of lake sturgeon. Next, I used mRNA sequencing of gill tissue and found enhanced transcriptional plasticity in the southern population relative to the less thermally tolerant northern counterparts. Pathway-specific functional analysis implicated mitochondrial function, oxidative damage, and immunocompetence as key mechanisms modulated by increasing acclimation temperatures with functional analysis indicating additional population-specific biological processes. Last, we specifically investigated the effects of sub-lethal thermal thresholds on stress and innate immune capacity through transcriptional profiling using qPCR. Acclimation temperature influenced the endocrine stress response and impaired the activation of molecular pathways involved in the immune, stress, and fatty acid responses of pathogen-challenged lake sturgeon in early development. Collective results suggest that, as environmental temperatures intensify, transcriptional plasticity, sub-lethal thermal tolerance thresholds, and overall physiological plasticity are diminished, likely resulting in the increased susceptibility of developing lake sturgeon to the effects of compounding environmental stressors.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".