| Summary: | Antarctic notothenioids radiated over past millions of years in extremely cold waters, they display a wide range of adaptations to withstand the cold and now dominate the Antarctic fish fauna. These fish may be extremely vulnerable to climate change with possible cascading effects on the entire Antarctic marine ecosystem. Therefore, crucial tasks are the concomitant study of the genomic basis of cold adaptation, the analysis of differentiation processes resulting from past and present climate change and a close survey of the current level of genetic variation and population structure. We considered four species of the Notothenioidei suborder: the three recently derived species of the Chionodraco genus, namely Chionodraco hamatus, Chionodraco rastrospinosus and Chionodraco myersi, and Pleuragramma antarcticum. The Chionodraco genus belongs to the family Channichthyidae (icefish), unique among vertebrates for the lack of hemoglobin and myoglobin expression in skeletal muscle. Oxygen delivery to tissues is ensured by a marked remodeling of the cardio-vascular system and by exceptionally high mitochondrial densities in the muscle. P. antarcticum (Nototheniidae) is the only notothenioid with a complete pelagic life cycle; it is dependent on sea ice and plays a key role in the trophic web of the Antarctic marine ecosystem. Analyses performed in this PhD can be grouped in two major lines of research: 1) the deepening of the knowledge on the genetic and genomic basis of icefish adaptation to the cold; 2) the analysis of patterns of intra- and inter-specific genetic differentiation with particular emphasis on how past and present environmental conditions have shaped and are influencing the fish genetic structure. With regard to the first line of research, we reconstructed and annotated the first normalized transcriptome of C. hamatus skeletal muscle and we exploited deep sequencing information of this energy-dependent tissue to test the hypothesis of duplication of genes involved in mitochondrial function. Using a ...
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