Journal of Stress Physiology & Biochemistry (May 2011)
Small HSPs molecular weights as new indication to the hypothesis of segregated status of thermophilic relict Gmelinoides fasciatus among baikal and palearctic amphipods
Abstract
Among the great diverse of Baikal fauna of amphipods (more than 350 species and subspecies) Gmelinoides fasciatus (Stebbing 1899) takes the special place. It is characterized by a high morphological variability and wide thermal-adaptive possibilities. By common opinion G. fasciatus is a thermophilic relict segregated from other Baikal temperature sensitive amphipods' fauna. In present study we tested hypothesis of segregated status of G. fasciatus among some Baikal and some Palearctic amphipods using of heat-shock proteins’ (HSP) molecular weight as comparative biomarkers. We used heat-shock proteins (HSP) from two families: HSP70 and small HSP (sHSP) immunochemically related to α-crystalline. 15 species of Baikal amphipods from different genera and families and 2 Palearctic species from genus Gammarus were tested. It was shown, that molecular weights of HSP70 were the same in all investigated species and corresponds close to 70 kD. In the contrast, the molecular weights of sHSP in G. fasciatus was 37 kD and differed from all other species, in which molecular weights of sHSP were 35 kD. In sum, this study showed that sHSPs molecular weights may relate to evolutional differences between the close related species. Additionally, obtained data can be taken as new indication of segregated status of thermophilic relict G. fasciatus which linked with its phylogenetic history in Lake Baikal.
