Transcriptomic analysis of Procambarus clarkii affected by “Black May” disease

Each year from April to May, high mortality rates are reported in red swamp crayfish (Procambarus clarkii) cultured in Jiangsu and other regions, in China, and this phenomenon has come to be known as “Black May” disease (BMD). Therefore, in order to investigate the possible causes of this disease, this study gathered BMD-affected P. clarkii samples and performed transcriptome analysis on hepatopancreas, gill, and muscle tissues. A total of 19,995,164, 149,212,804, and 222,053,848 clean reads were respectively obtained from the gills, muscle, and hepatopancreas of BMD-affected P. clarkii, and 114,024 unigenes were identified. The number of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in gill, muscle, and hepatopancreas was 1703, 964, and 476, respectively. GO and KEGG enrichment analyses of the DEGs were then conducted. Based on KEGG pathway enrichment analysis, the most significantly differentially expressed pathways were mainly those involved with metabolism, human disease, and cellular processes. Further analysis of the significantly DEGs revealed that they were mainly related to the mitochondrial-mediated apoptosis pathway and that the expression of these DEGs was mostly down-regulated. Moreover, the expression of genes related to immune and metabolism-related pathways was also significantly down-regulated, and these significantly-inhibited pathways were the likely causes of P. clarkii death. Therefore, our results provide a basis for the identification of BMD causes.