Physiological and Behavioural Regulation of Animal Stress Responses

动物应激反应的生理和行为调节

• 批准号: RGPIN-2014-06177
• 负责人: Currie, Suzanne
• 金额: $ 2.91万
• 依托单位: Mount Allison University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2016-01-01 至 2017-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=612077
• 关键词: Physiological; Behavioural; Regulation; Animal; Stress

Animals respond to stress by engaging in strategies to cope with the disruption in homeostasis. If the stress is prolonged or severe, these stress-coping mechanisms may be insufficient and the animal has increased susceptibility to disease and/or death. The long-term goal of my research program is focused on understanding feedback amongst behavioural, physiological and cellular stress response strategies in animals. My motivation is twofold: 1) to understand how aquatic animals are dealing with a changing, often stressful environment and 2) to use fish and their cells as models to understand fundamental stress-coping strategies. In the short term, we will address how the physiological (Obj 1) and behavioural (Obj 2) state of the animal influences its response and tolerance to stress. I am proposing ecologically relevant whole-animal experiments and mechanistic cell-based experiments to address two short-term objectives. The first uses osmotic and heat stress in elasmobranchs and hagfishes to investigate the relationship between chemical and molecular chaperones. Cells use these chaperones to mitigate stress-induced cellular damage and assist with proper protein folding. The molecular chaperones, of which the heat shock proteins (HSPs) are a well-studied example, bind directly to proteins and assist with folding. Chemical chaperones, such as the osmolyte, trimethylamine oxide (TMAO), on the other hand, interact indirectly with proteins to inhibit protein aggregation. The overarching hypothesis here is that animals with high concentrations of chemical chaperones will have lower concentrations of molecular chaperones. Our findings could reveal novel roles for chaperones during stress and provide insight into how the two chaperones systems are fundamentally integrated in cells. My second objective will address how social stress affects responses to thermal stress. Here, we will use the mangrove rivulus fish, the only known selfing hermaphroditic vertebrate, to isolate genetics and tease apart the contributions of environmental variation on behavioural and physiological phenotypes. With this unique model, we will determine thermal physiology and tolerance between and within isogenic lineages and investigate how social behaviour, in the form of aggression, affects an animal’s response to environmental change. We will also determine the molecular signatures of social interactions and the thermal stress response as we predict that these phenotypes may be regulated by common mechanisms. The ability to use genotype as an independent variable to examine variability in behaviour and thermal physiology will help to disentangle genetic and environmental effects on the physiology of stress resistance. Overall, this research will provide a greater understanding of the physiological underpinnings of stress tolerance allowing us to make informed predictions on the impact of environmental change on aquatic animals.

动物对压力的反应是通过采取策略来科普体内平衡的破坏。如果压力是长期的或严重的，这些压力应对机制可能是不够的，动物对疾病和/或死亡的易感性增加。我的研究计划的长期目标是专注于了解动物的行为，生理和细胞应激反应策略之间的反馈。我的动机是双重的：1）了解水生动物如何应对不断变化的，经常有压力的环境，2）使用鱼类和它们的细胞作为模型来了解基本的压力应对策略。在短期内，我们将讨论动物的生理（目标1）和行为（目标2）状态如何影响其对压力的反应和耐受性。我建议生态相关的整体动物实验和机械细胞为基础的实验，以解决两个短期目标。第一个使用渗透和热应力在板鳃类和盲鳗调查化学和分子伴侣之间的关系。细胞使用这些分子伴侣来减轻应激诱导的细胞损伤，并帮助蛋白质正确折叠。分子伴侣，其中热休克蛋白（HSP）是一个研究充分的例子，直接结合蛋白质，并协助折叠。另一方面，化学分子伴侣，如渗透剂氧化三甲胺（TMAO），与蛋白质间接相互作用，抑制蛋白质聚集。这里的首要假设是，具有高浓度化学伴侣的动物将具有较低浓度的分子伴侣。我们的研究结果可以揭示压力期间伴侣的新作用，并深入了解两种伴侣系统如何从根本上整合在细胞中。我的第二个目标是解决社会压力如何影响对热压力的反应。在这里，我们将使用红树林rivulus鱼，唯一已知的自交雌雄同体的脊椎动物，分离遗传和梳理除了环境变化对行为和生理表型的贡献。有了这个独特的模型，我们将确定热生理学和耐受性之间和同基因谱系内，并研究如何社会行为，在侵略的形式，影响动物对环境变化的反应。我们还将确定社会相互作用和热应激反应的分子特征，因为我们预测这些表型可能受到共同机制的调控。使用基因型作为一个独立的变量，以检查行为和热生理的变异性的能力将有助于解开遗传和环境对应激抗性生理的影响。总的来说，这项研究将提供更好的了解应激耐受的生理基础，使我们能够对环境变化对水生动物的影响做出明智的预测。