Pilot Lipidomics Study of Copepods: Investigation of Potential Lipid-Based Biomarkers for the Early Detection and Quantification of the Biological Effects of Climate Change on the Oceanic Food Chain

• Published in: Life
• Main Authors: Paul L. Wood, Michael D. Wood, Stan C. Kunigelis
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2023
• Subjects: copepods; lipidomics; climate change; oceanic food chain; sentinel species; Science; Q; Calanus finmarchicus; North Atlantic; Copepods
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3390/life13122335; https://doaj.org/article/1c5d14d770bc4c1f900f267bfa712329

Maintenance of the health of our oceans is critical for the survival of the oceanic food chain upon which humanity is dependent. Zooplanktonic copepods are among the most numerous multicellular organisms on earth. As the base of the primary consumer food web, they constitute a major biomass in oceans, being an important food source for fish and functioning in the carbon cycle. The potential impact of climate change on copepod populations is an area of intense study. Omics technologies offer the potential to detect early metabolic alterations induced by the stresses of climate change. One such omics approach is lipidomics, which can accurately quantify changes in lipid pools serving structural, signal transduction, and energy roles. We utilized high-resolution mass spectrometry (≤2 ppm mass error) to characterize the lipidome of three different species of copepods in an effort to identify lipid-based biomarkers of copepod health and viability which are more sensitive than observational tools. With the establishment of such a lipid database, we will have an analytical platform useful for prospectively monitoring the lipidome of copepods in a planned long-term five-year ecological study of climate change on this oceanic sentinel species. The copepods examined in this pilot study included a North Atlantic species ( Calanus finmarchicus ) and two species from the Gulf of Mexico, one a filter feeder ( Acartia tonsa ) and one a hunter ( Labidocerca aestiva ). Our findings clearly indicate that the lipidomes of copepod species can vary greatly, supporting the need to obtain a broad snapshot of each unique lipidome in a long-term multigeneration prospective study of climate change. This is critical, since there may well be species-specific responses to the stressors of climate change and co-stressors such as pollution. While lipid nomenclature and biochemistry are extremely complex, it is not essential for all readers interested in climate change to understand all of the various lipid classes presented in this study. The ...