Development of a cDNA microarray of zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha) foot and its use in understanding the early stage of underwater adhesion.

The underwater adhesion of the zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha) to substrates is a complex process that is controlled by a delicate apparatus, the byssus. As a critical activity of the byssus glands embedded in the zebra mussel feet, byssogenesis is highly active to produce numerous byssal threads from the settled juvenile stage through the adult stage in its life cycle. This lifelong activity helps the zebra mussel to firmly attach to substrata underwater, thereby causing severe economic and ecologic impacts. In an attempt to better understand the zebra mussel's byssus activity, a cDNA microarray (ZMB) including 716 genes, generated from a Suppression Subtractive Hybridization (SSH) cDNA library, was printed and used for the comparison of gene expression during zebra mussel adhesion and non-adhesion. To better understand the byssogenesis mechanism, RNA samples from the zebra mussel feet with byssogenesis and without byssogenesis were used in a two-color hybridization to reveal the gene differential expression in the two states. Based on the P values (P<0.05), Fifty-two ESTs were found as differentially expressed genes and were divided into two groups, upregulated and downregulated groups according to there logFC values. With the false discovery rate (FDR) adjustment, seven were identified from the upregulated group and nine from the downregulated group. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that the four excretory gland peptide-like protein (EGP) encoding genes in upregulated group are structurally different than the two in the downregulated list. The amino acid composition analysis on the proteins, which were encoded by the up- or downregulated ESTs without homologues (NH) suggested that seven of the NH proteins are biochemically similar to the novel foot proteins from other mussels. The quantitative reverse transcription PCR (QRT-PCR) proved the uniqueness of the templates in the array, and also confirmed the differentially expressed genes identified by microarray experiment. Our findings demonstrated that the zebra mussel byssus cDNA microarray is an efficient tool for the studies of differential gene expression in different byssogenesis states, thereby revealing important details of the underwater adhesion.