INTRODUCTION
C. batrachus is an amphibious walking catfish which is capable of air-breathing. It resides in fresh water. It is found in Indian subcontinent. Usually, it lives in stagnant water bodies or swamps that are slow flowing. At the time of draught it moves terrestrially to live on mudflats. The characteristic features of such water bodies are low DO, high bicarbonate and NH3. During prolonged drought, it moves in or hides in the mud to avoid total dehydration
C. batrachus is ureogenic i.e. in normal environment it is ammoniotelic (excrete ammonia as primary excretory product) but when the environment demands it can switch to ureotelic mode of excretion (synthesize urea via the conventional urea cycle).
Under such environmental condition,…show more content… This increased ammonia level is very toxic and can lead to severe problems including death. Some of the impacts of toxic ammonia levels includes: decrease in oxygen carrying capacity of hemoglobin, acid-base balance disturbance, reduction of growth rate, hemorrhage, interfere with other metabolic pathways viz. TCA cycle, Glycolysis.
The strategies that can possibly help to overcome the toxic effects of ammonia are
(i) By switching to ureotelic mode of excretion (functional OUC)
(ii) Converting ammonia into non-essential Fatty amino acids and glutamine.
(iii) Increasing the tolerance at the cellular and subcellular levels,
HSP
Organisms respond to the stress environment in such a way that they can adapt to the new environment. As a result stress proteins are induced to acclimate to the stressed condition. These responses are called stress responses also known as Heat Shock and so stress protein are known as heat shock protein. These stress protein are highly conserved. These proteins play fundamental role in the maintenance of homeostasis and viability of the…show more content… batrachus requires possessing very efficient adaptive mechanisms to tolerate the ammonia toxicity while living under hyper-ammonia stress. The present study was aimed at elucidate the possible upregulation in the expression of Hsp70, one of the major molecular chaperones, and its mRNA expression while dwelling in HEA by exposing the C. batrachus in 25 mM NH4Cl for seven days.
As evidenced by Western blot analysis, high ammonia exposure resulted in the upregulation of Hsp70 expression in different tissues of the C. batrachus by 1.3 to 2.4 fold.
Further, the results of RT-PCR analysis clearly demonstrated an increase in the of expression of mRNA for Hsp70 by about 2 to 2.6 fold in different tissues of the C. batrachus (Fig. 2) during high