Physiology Commons^™

Effect Of Torpor On Host Transcriptomic Responses To A Fungal Pathogen In Hibernating Bats, Kenneth A. Field, Brent J. Sewall, Jenni M. Prokkola, Gregory G. Turner, Marianne Gagnon, Thomas M. Lilley, J Paul White, Joseph S. Johnson, Christopher L. Hauer, Deeann M. Reeder

Faculty Journal Articles

Hibernation, the use of prolonged torpor to depress metabolism, is employed by mammals to conserve resources during extended periods of extreme temperatures and/or resource limitation. Mammalian hibernators arouse to euthermy periodically during torpor for reasons that are not well understood and these arousals may facilitate immune processes. To determine if arousals enable host responses to pathogens, we used dual RNA‐Seq and a paired sampling approach to examine gene expression in a hibernating bat, the little brown myotis (Myotis lucifugus). During torpor, transcript levels differed in only a few genes between uninfected wing tissue and adjacent tissue infected with …