AUTHOR=Wang Gang , Yang Ence , Smith Kerri J. , Zeng Yong , Ji Guoli , Connon Richard , Fangue Nann A. , Cai James J. TITLE=Gene expression responses of threespine stickleback to salinity: implications for salt-sensitive hypertension JOURNAL=Frontiers in Genetics VOLUME=5 YEAR=2014 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/genetics/articles/10.3389/fgene.2014.00312 DOI=10.3389/fgene.2014.00312 ISSN=1664-8021 ABSTRACT=
Despite recent success with genome-wide association studies (GWAS), identifying hypertension (HTN)-susceptibility loci in the general population remains difficult. Here, we present a novel strategy to address this challenge by studying salinity adaptation in the threespine stickleback, a fish species with diverse salt-handling ecotypes. We acclimated native freshwater (FW) and anadromous saltwater (SW) threespine sticklebacks to fresh, brackish, and sea water for 30 days, and applied RNA sequencing to determine the gene expression in fish kidneys. We identified 1844 salt-responsive genes that were differentially expressed between FW sticklebacks acclimated to different salinities and/or between SW and FW sticklebacks acclimated to full-strength sea water. Significant overlap between stickleback salt-responsive genes and human genes implicated in HTN was detected (