Immunity-related genes and signaling pathways under hypoxic stresses in Haliotis diversicolor: a transcriptome analysis

Due to increased temperatures and aquaculture density, thermal and hypoxia stresses have become serious problems for the aquaculture of abalone Haliotis diversicolor. Stresses lead to immunosuppression, which can cause severe negative impacts on aquaculture farms. To study the mechanism of immunosuppression after hypoxia stress and bacterial challenge, transcriptomes of H. diversicolor hemocytes involved in immunity were profiled. A total of 307,395,572 clean reads were generated and assembled into 99,774 unigenes. KEGG analysis indicated that 225 unigenes with immunologic function were mapped into immune-related pathways. Expression of 41 unigenes measured by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) showed consistent results with that of transcriptome analysis. When exposure challenge of Vibrio parahaemolyticus, it is indicated that the PI3K-AKT, MAPK, NF-κB and P53 signal pathways were involved in the hypoxia-induced immunosuppression of H. diversicolor. Furthermore, when the AKT gene (HdAKT) was inhibited by double-stranded RNA (dsRNA), expression levels of HdAKT was lower than the blank and control group in hemocytes at 4 h, 12 h and 24 h (p < 0.05).