Ferritin Gene from the Swimming Crab (Portunus trituberculatus) Involved in Salinity Stress Adaptation

Ferritin is a highly conserved iron storage protein playing an important role in the iron metabolism and cell protection. Swimming crab (Portunus trituberculatus) is an important fishery and aquaculture species in China and water salinity has a significant effect on its physiological processes. In order to verify whether the ferritin gene contributed to swimming crab salinity adaptation, ferritin (PtFer) cDNA open reading frame (ORF) was cloned. Homologous amino acid sequence alignment of PtFer showed a1 higher similarity to the ferritin heavy chain than the light chain. The gene expression profiles of PtFer under different salinity treatments were investigated by semi-quantitative RT-PCR. To further validate the salinity tolerance functions of PtFer, we investigated the eukaryotic expression of PtFer recombinant plasmid in 239T cells under a series of salinity stress. The results showed that the survival rate of the cells transfected with PtFer gene recombinant plasmid was significantly higher than that of the cells transfected with plasmid without insert fragment during the low salinity challenges, which indicated that PtFer might possess a protective effect against low salinity stress. Therefore, our results together indicated that the PtFer gene plays an important role in swimming crab salinity adaptation physiological process.

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