Dr. Douglas Petcoff
Professor
Metropolitan State University of Denver

RNA-seq can be used to analyze the heat shock response at the molecular level. Ectotherms such as the cold-adapted members of the family salmonidae (which includes salmon and

trout) are particularly vulnerable to heat stress, which has become increasingly problematic due to warming environments in Colorado and elsewhere. At the heart of the heat shock

response is the inducible activity of a number of different molecular chaperones known as heat shock proteins. Many elements of the heat shock response are highly conserved

throughout all kingdoms of life, and are induced by a wide variety of stressors, including toxic compounds and ions, nutritional factors, social factors, the “genetic stress” that results from

inbreeding, disease organisms, and events that occur in cancer cells. The stress-response model that I will discuss centers on acute thermal stress in cutthroat trout and closely-related

species. Salmonid genomics, transcriptomics, differential gene expression (DE) and pathway analysis using gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes (KEGG) will be discussed.