Integrated transcriptomic and proteomic analyses of the tissues from the digestive gland of Chlamys farreri following cadmium exposure

Objectives Cadmium causes the pollution of marine habitat and Chlamys farreri is an effective concentrator of heavy metals, the aim of this study was to study the response mechanism of C. farreri to cadmium stress at transcriptomic and proteomic levels. Methods Transcriptomic analysis based on RNA‐sequencing and proteomic analysis based on isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation were performed to reveal the molecular response of C. farreri to different concentrations of cadmium (0.1, 0.3, and 1 mg/L). In addition, a protein‐protein interaction (PPI) network was constructed based on the Cytoscape tool to identify hub proteins related to the response of C. farreri to cadmium stress. Results A total of 24 190 unigenes from 58 683 candidates were annotated in known databases. The numbers of the differentially expressed unigenes (DEGs) was different among the three cadmium‐treated groups compared with the control group. DEGs were involved in many pathways such as ABC transporters, protein processing in endoplasmic reticulum and endocytosis. A total of 660 proteins were identified, and differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) among different groups were determined. The overlapping DEGs and DEPs were associated with cadmium response. The upregulated unigene0002618 and downregulated unigene0000904 may be more important for the response of C. farreri to cadmium stress. Unigene0009750 was the hub protein in the PPI network with the highest degree of 20. Conclusions Our transcriptomic and proteomic analyses elucidated the molecular response of C. farreri to cadmium stress. Cadmium causes the pollution of marine habitat and Chlamys farreri is an effective concentrator of heavy metals; the aim of this study was to study the response mechanism of C. farreri to cadmium stress both in transcriptome and proteome levels. Our transcriptomic and proteomic analysis of C. farreri elucidated its molecular response to cadmium stress.