Data from: Life-stage associated remodeling of lipid metabolism regulation in Atlantic salmon

Atlantic salmon migrates from rivers to sea to feed, grow and develop gonads before returning to spawn in freshwater. The transition to marine habitats is associated with dramatic changes in the environment, including water salinity, exposure to pathogens, and shift in dietary lipid availability. Many anticipatory changes in physiology occur before migration to sea, but little is known about the molecular nature of these changes. Here we use a long term feeding experiment to study transcriptional regulation of lipid metabolism in Atlantic salmon gut and liver in both fresh- and saltwater. We find that lipid metabolism is highly plastic in response to differences in dietary lipid composition in freshwater, but then undergoes a marked shift when salmon transitions to the marine life-stage. Expression of genes in liver relating to lipogenesis and lipid transport decrease overall and become less responsive to diet, while genes for lipid uptake in gut become more highly expressed. Finally, analyses of evolutionary consequences of the salmonid specific whole-genome duplication on lipid metabolism reveals several pathways with significantly different (p