Molecular response uncovers neurotoxicity of Pardosa pseudoannulata exposed to cadmium pressure

Cadmium (Cd) is a widely distributed heavy metal in south of China. Growing evidence indicates that systemic exposure to Cd, particularly the long-term exposure, may cause neurotoxic effects. Nevertheless, mechanisms underlying Cd neurotoxicity remain not completely understood. In this report, we investigated the neural alterations in the spider Pardosa pseudoannulata (Bösenberg and Strand, 1906) exposed to long-term Cd (LCd) and short-term Cd (SCd) pressure. Cd stress lowered foraging ability and prey consuming time in the spiders. In addition, enzymatic analysis results indicated that Cd exposure reduced the level of acetylcholinesterase at subcellular level. We then identified differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the Cd exposed spiders using pairwise comparisons and found that a large number of DEGs were related to neurotransmitter receptors and ion transport and binding proteins. Notably, LCd exposure harbored more altered genes in ion transporter activity comparing with SCd exposure. From six K-means clusters, 53 putative transcriptional factors (TFs) belonging to 21 families were characterized, and ZBTB subfamily displayed the most distinctive alterations in the characterized genes, which is assumed to play a key role in the regulation of ion transmembrane process under Cd stress. A protein-to-protein interaction network constructed by the yielded DEGs also showed that ion and receptor binding activities were affected under long-term Cd exposure. Four key modules from the network indicated that Cd may further down-regulate energy metabolism pathway in spiders. Collectively, this comprehensive analysis provides multi-dimensional insights to understand the molecular response of spiders to Cd exposure.