HEAT-SHOCK PROTEIN EXPRESSION IS ABSENT IN THE ANTARCTIC FISH

• Main Author: Trematomus Bernacchii (family Nototheniidae
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2000
• Subjects: Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.378.9768; http://hofmannlab.msi.ucsb.edu/publications/PDFs/Hofmann et al 2000 JEB.pdf

The heat-shock response, the enhanced expression of one or more classes of molecular chaperones termed heat-shock proteins (hsps) in response to stress induced by high temperatures, is commonly viewed as a ‘universal’ characteristic of organisms. We examined the occurrence of the heat-shock response in a highly cold-adapted, stenothermal Antarctic teleost fish, Trematomus bernacchii, to determine whether this response has persisted in a lineage that has encountered very low and stable temperatures for at least the past 14–25 million years. The patterns of protein synthesis observed in in vivo metabolic labelling experiments that involved injection of 35S-labelled methionine and cysteine into whole fish previously subjected to a heat stress of 10 °C yielded no evidence for synthesis of any size class of heat-shock protein. Parallel in