Preliminary evidence for snail deformation from a Eutrophic lake

•Eutrophic regions were enriched with female snails with deformed tentacles.•A different profile of unigene expression was discerned between these locations.•The deformed tentacles might be due to partial masculinization.

The incidence of deformities in snails Bellamya aeruginosa was investigated in a typical eutrophicated lake - Taihu Lake. A total of 15 105 specimens were collected, and 0.18-0.93% of the snails exhibited abnormal tentacle bifurcations. Abnormally developed snails were all female and were found in regions with relatively high Chlorophyll a levels (12.40 ± 7.23 μg/L). As tentacles are sexually dimorphic in B. aeruginosa, we postulated that factors associated with eutrophication might be responsible for the partial masculinization of tentacles in females. Differential gene expression analyses revealed that a number of unigenes were significantly up-regulated or down-regulated in snails sampled from three locations having high Chlorophyll a levels compared with snails sampled from the region with lower Chlorophyll a level (2.95 μg/L). Thus, transcriptomic profiling revealed potential molecular signal of eutrophication that can lead to developmental abnormalities in this species.

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