Little bit of science: proteomic profiling of parental mucus

[Albanets]

To whom it may be interested... I found it very interesting...here is a paper abstract. if you have institutional access to PubMed, here is the link to the full paper:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16385477&query_hl=12&itool=pubmed_docsum


Proteomics profiling of epidermal mucus secretion of a cichlid (Symphysodon aequifasciata) demonstrating parental care behavior.

Chong K, Joshi S, Jin LT, Shu-Chien AC.

"The discus fish (Symphysodon aequifasciata) is a cichlid demonstrating advanced mode of parental care towards fry. Both male and female fish utilized epidermal mucus secreted from specialized epidermal cells to feed developing fry. We utilized proteomics to compare protein profile from parental and nonparental fish. Gel analysis revealed a total of 35 spots that were up-regulated in parental mucus. In tandem, another 18 spots were uniquely expressed in parental mucus. MS analysis of these spots identified proteins such as fructose biphosphate aldolase, nucleoside diphosphate kinase, and heat shock proteins, which are essential to support energy provision, cell repair and proliferation, stress mediation, and defense mechanism in parental fish during parental-care period. Concurrently, the detection of several antioxidant-related proteins such as thioredoxin peroxidase and hemopexin suggests a need to overcome oxidative stress during hypermucosal production in parental-care behavior. A C-type lectin was also found to be uniquely expressed in parental mucus and could have important role in providing antimicrobial defense to both parental fish and fry. In summary, our study shows that discus mucus proteome undergoes changes in protein expression during parental-care period."

[Condor]

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

[Tony_S]

I'd like to pretend I understood all that....buuuut....I DIDNT!!:D

The only real thought I had while I was trying to comprehend...was that its amazing that an eggyolk diet (artificial rearing) could replace all that.

Or does it?

Tony

[Kindredspirit]

Ya Think?




http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/16/16_4_10.gif



Marie~

[Albanets]

Well, I will try to explain.
Discus shows advanced parental care behaviour. Discus fry feeds from slime (mucus) of parents. It is unclear why though. One of the explanations is that newborn's mouth is so small that it cannot feed on microscopic food present in discus' wild habitat.
I doubt it, because it seems that cardinal tetra fry which shares the very same Amazon habitat is even smaller. Maybe there are other explanations.
Anyway, we know that discus fry feeds on parents slime at least for a week of free swimming, and it is very stressful for parent fish.

In this paper scientists have tried to answer the simple question: what is the difference between mucus of normal discus compare to that of discus-parent. They found that some organic agents are produced in elevated amounts. These agents seem to help discus parents to ease the shock or constant biting by fry.

But it is not all: some of these organic molecules may provide essential help for fry, such as growth, protection from deseases etc. For example, C-type lectin helps both stressed parents and fragile fry to fight deseases.

If confirmed, one could add such chemicals to the artificial food to increase fry's survival rate.

On the other hand, some people successfully raised fry independently of caring parents and their mucus. However, they claim that such discus lost their ability to raise fry by themselves.

So, as usual, there are more questions than answers... :D