The Distribution of Ferritins in Marine Copepods

Iron is an essential element for the functioning of cellular processes. Ferritins, major intracellular iron storage proteins, convert free Fe2+ into nontoxic Fe3+ which can be stored and transported where needed. To date, little known about metabolism in copepods; however, these crustaceans, ferritins have been used as biomarkers stress diapause. A limiting factor studies has use a single ferritin transcript biomarker. In this paper, we silico mined publicly available copepod transcriptomes to characterize multiplicity transcripts different orders families. We also examined expression three ecologically important copepods—Calanus finmarchicus, C. helgolandicus Temora stylifera—during development under conditions. full-length encoding heavy chain identified all 27 transcriptomes, with 50% species possessing multiple transcripts. Ferritin increased finmarchicus during early–late transition, T. stylifera females exposed oxylipins at sea. Overall, our results suggest that involved storage, larval response, thus representing potential biomarker genes ocean health status monitoring.