Mar Huertas- PhD
- Professor (Associate) at Texas State University
Mar Huertas
- PhD
- Professor (Associate) at Texas State University
Associate Professor
About
87
Publications
25,621
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1,131
Citations
Introduction
Current institution
Additional affiliations
August 2016 - present
November 2006 - March 2012
December 2015 - November 2018
Education
June 2001 - November 2006
September 1992 - February 1998
Publications
Publications (87)
Rainbow trout can smell virus and bacteria cues that in turn activate an immune response in the brain in absence of a systemic response (i.e. the immune response is activated by the nervous system instead of the pathogen inside tissues or bloodstream). However, little is known if pathogen odors can elicit different physiological responses (i.e. beh...
Elevated concentrations of nitrite are toxic to fish and can cause a myriad of well documented issues. However, the effects of sublethal concentrations of nitrite on fish health, and specifically, fish tissue microbiomes have not been studied. To test the effects of nitrite exposure, goldfish were exposed to sublethal concentrations of nitrite, 0.0...
This study will explore the effects of acute nitrite exposure in the olfactory organ of Xiphophorus couchianus through histological studies. Exposure to aquatic nitrite is known to affect cardiovascular functionality, respiration, and the endocrine and nervous systems in vertebrates. Fish have proven to be beneficial models for studying the effects...
Aquaponics has become a major focus of aquaculture and related research in recent years. Advancements have been made in increasing production efficiency, however, research has focused on reared fish over ornamental fish, despite an estimated worth of over $1 billion per year in this industry. Our model organism, goldfish (Carassius auratus), are or...
Nitrite is a common pollutant that can enter waterways via agricultural runoff or build up in aquaculture ponds when nitrogenous waste is converted to nitrite. Preliminary studies by the Huertas lab found that exposure to sublethal concentrations of aquatic nitrite alters the microbiome of goldfish and bioaccumulates in the olfactory epithelia, gil...
The objective of this study is to unravel the integration of olfactory signals involved in the nasal detection of pathogens and the activation of associated physiological responses in Rainbow trout.
The infectious pathogen Yersinia ruckeri causes enteric redmouth disease in aquaculture farms worldwide. Recent research shows that olfactory organ of...
Anosmia, loss of smell, is a prevalent symptom of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Anosmia may be explained by several mechanisms driven by infection of non-neuronal cells and damage in the nasal epithelium rather than direct infection of olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs). Previously, viral proteins have been shown to be sufficient to cause neuroimmune respons...
The identification of bacteria isolated from goldfish skin, gill, and nose microbiomes and determining their antimicrobial abilities against four common fish pathogens.
Human population growth and its associated effects on the environment contribute to the rapid decrease of biodiversity worldwide. Artificial light at night (ALAN) is an anthropogenic pollutant that is increasing with the spread of urbanization and may contribute to biodiversity declines. ALAN alters the migration patterns of birds, communication in...
18 19 The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted the search for animal models that recapitulate the 20 pathophysiology observed in humans infected with SARS-CoV-2 and allow rapid and high 21 throughput testing of drugs and vaccines. Exposure of larvae to SARS-CoV-2 Spike (S) receptor 22 binding domain (RBD) recombinant protein was sufficient to elevate lar...
18 19 The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted the search for animal models that recapitulate the 20 pathophysiology observed in humans infected with SARS-CoV-2 and allow rapid and high 21 throughput testing of drugs and vaccines. Exposure of larvae to SARS-CoV-2 Spike (S) receptor 22 binding domain (RBD) recombinant protein was sufficient to elevate lar...
Around 50% of fish consumption comes from aquaculture. An increase in world population and food demands requires fish production to dramatically increase over the next decade. One of the major obstacles of increasing aquaculture production is disease. Thus, a key aspect of aquaculture research is understanding immune health and the spread of diseas...
As the human population grows the demand for food products grows, increasing the need for high agricultural output. This increase in agriculture leads to the frequent use of inorganic fertilizers which can pollute freshwater systems with nitrogenous compounds. Nitrite, a byproduct of fertilizer pollution, can accumulate and reach concentrations bet...
Information received from the external environment modulates reproductive behavior in vertebrates and determines when and with whom to mate. If one of these signals is not received, then the selected behavior may not occur. It is known that chemical and visual signals play a role in reproductive behavior in fish, but whether they work together is n...
The olfactory system detects odorants in the environment and sends signals to the brain, which in turn integrate the information and trigger vital physiological processes including reproduction, predator evasion and food detection. The olfactory sensory system is comprised of olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) which express unique receptors that disc...
Increased agriculture and industrial activity have elevated the concentration of nitrogenous compounds in the terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Nitrogenous compounds can naturally occur in aquatic ecosystems, concentrations are controlled and maintained through the nitrogen cycle by bacterial denitrification/nitrification. As large quantities of...
Stress negatively impacts a person’s health, and stress in the school environment may negatively impact student performance. For the past five years, the graduation rate for undergraduate students has been falling. The main factors contributing to this decline may involve indirect or direct stress on the student. For instance, learning space and en...
Striped Bass Morone saxatilis are an iconic North American fish. This species, and it’s hybrid with White Bass Morone chrysops , Palmetto Bass are intensively cultured for stocking into Texas water bodies. However, a large proportion of hatchery‐spawned Palmetto Bass larvae were recently plagued with malformations. Pug headedness is a common malfor...
Significance
In many animals, males deceive females into mating using traits that mimic cues of food, predators, preferred habitats, or offspring in need of care. However, if and how these deceptive signals guide reliable communication without females confusing the mimic and the model remain unclear. We discovered that female sea lamprey discrimina...
A long-standing hypothesis in subterranean biology posits that organisms living in poor resource subsurface habitats can withstand long periods of bioenergetic shortages due to an innate reduced metabolic rate when compared to their epigean counterparts. However, previous studies have proposed that caves with ample energy resources may not evolve o...
Preliminary results of the impact of sublethal concentrations of nitrite on the nose, gill, gut, and water microbiomes in goldfish.
Significance
Many pathogens exploit the olfactory route to gain entry into the host. Olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) are responsible for the detection of chemical stimuli in the environment but are also continuously exposed to microorganisms. Here, we report the interaction between crypt neurons (unique OSNs present in fish) and fish rhabdoviruses...
On going Aquatic Nanoplastics study being done in the Huertas Lab at Texas State University.
Goldfish have been used in numerous studies involving behavior and toxicology, however, their viability as an animal model to study neuropathies remains to be elucidated. We have previously discovered that the nitrite ion (NO 2 ⁻ ) acts as an olfactory disruptor in goldfish. We hypothesize that this disruption is due to neurotoxic effects of NO 2 ⁻...
Increased plastic pollution has begun to affect aquatic environments from oceans to freshwater streams with little signs of it slowing down since plastics are a cheap and durable resource to use for manufacturing. Due to increased plastic material waste in natural aquatic ecosystems, fish are threatened by the natural break down of these plastics i...
Freshwater ecosystems have experienced a dramatic increase of nitrogenous compounds as a result of farming and industrial activity. Nitrite accumulates by bacterial denitrification/nitrification in freshwater and saltwater ecosystems, reaching concentrations of 1 mM and 0.5 μM respectively. Exposure to high nitrite concentrations can disrupt the en...
Vertebrate olfactory receptors (OR) are directly exposed to microorganisms, such as viruses, due to their direct contact with the external environment. A previous study showed that nasal delivery of rhabdovirus IHNV (Infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus) in fish activate nasal immune responses marked by an increase of chemokine CCL19 and prostag...
Chemical communication in aquatic environments plays a crucial role in mating by facilitating conspecific recognition, mate selection, and coordination of reproduction. Aquatic chemical communication is well‐understood in a handful of model species; moreover, none of the models are live‐bearing fish. We studied chemical communication in a live‐bear...
The nervous system is known to regulate host immune responses. However, the ability of neurons to detect danger and initiate immune responses at barrier tissues is unclear. Vertebrate olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) are located in direct contact with the external environment and therefore are directly exposed to pathogens. Here, we report that nas...
Significance
Anadromous fishes are those that migrate from the ocean into freshwater to reproduce and need to orient toward a suitable spawning stream or risk leaving no offspring. These migrants are known to use olfactory cues to guide stream selection, but the cues’ identities are not known. Incidentally, it is well-known that stream-dwelling lar...
Vertebrate olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) are located in direct contact with the external environment and therefore they directly exposed to microorganisms such as viruses. Teleost fish have four types of OSNs, including crypt neurons, a cell type with enigmatic function. Crypt neurons express tyrosine receptor kinase A (TrkA)-like molecule and O...
Vertebrate olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) are located in direct contact with the external environment and therefore they directly exposed to microorganisms such as viruses. Teleost fish have four types of OSNs, including crypt neurons, a cell type with enigmatic function. Crypt neurons express tyrosine receptor kinase A (TrkA)-like molecule and O...
In the last decade, freshwater ecosystems have experienced a dramatic increase of nitrogenous compounds as a result of farming and industrial activity. Aquatic ammonium (NH4+) is naturally transformed to nitrite (NO−2) by nitrifying bacteria. Nitrite is toxic to vertebrates and is known to cause disruption of physiological processes such as ion hom...
In the last decade, freshwater ecosystems have experienced a dramatic increase of nitrogenous compounds as a result of farming and industrial activity. Aquatic ammonium (NH4 ⁺ ) is naturally transformed to nitrite (NO ⁻ 2 ) by nitrifying bacteria. Nitrite is toxic to vertebrates and is known to cause disruption of physiological processes such as io...
Ligand-based virtual screening has become a standard technique for the efficient discovery of bioactive small molecules. Following assays to determine the activity of compounds selected by virtual screening, or other approaches in which dozens to thousands of molecules have been tested, machine learning techniques make it straightforward to discove...
While the advantage of screening vast databases of molecules to cover greater molecular diversity is often mentioned, in reality, only a few studies have been published demonstrating inhibitor discovery by screening more than a million compounds for features that mimic a known three-dimensional (3D) ligand. Two factors contribute: the general diffi...
While the advantage of screening vast databases of molecules to cover greater molecular diversity is often mentioned, in reality, only a few studies have been published demonstrating inhibitor discovery by screening more than a million compounds for features that mimic a known three-dimensional ligand. Two factors contribute: the general difficulty...
Deciding where to reproduce is a major challenge for most animals. Many select habitats based upon cues of successful reproduction by conspecifics, such as the presence of offspring from past reproductive events. For example, some fishes select spawning habitat following odors released by juveniles whose rearing habitat overlaps with spawning habit...
Pheromones are among the most important sexual signals used by organisms throughout the animal kingdom. However, few are identified in vertebrates, leaving the evolutionary mechanisms underlying vertebrate pheromones poorly understood. Pre-existing biases in receivers’ perceptual systems shape visual and auditory signaling systems, but studies on h...
Pheromones are crucial chemical signals that elicit an immediate physiological response in conspecifics, including the coordination of mating behavior. Pheromones are detected via olfaction, and have multiple origins, such as urine and feces. We sought to identify behaviors triggered by conspecific olfactory chemical signals (i.e. pheromones) in th...
Animals rely on a mosaic of complex information to find and evaluate mates. Pheromones, often comprised of multiple components, are considered to be particularly important for species-recognition in many species. While the evolution of species-specific pheromone blends is well-described in many insects, very few vertebrate pheromones have been stud...
Assessment of stress from varied sources is usually evaluated using individuals derived from a single population and is assumed to represent all populations of that species. However, recent research has identified intraspecies variations in the stress response, which may be mediated by life history. We examined how life history can influence the ph...
High resolution mass spectrum report for synthesized DkPES ammonium salt (HR-ESI-MS).
(DOCX)
Percentage of sexually mature female sea lamprey that moved upstream 45 m (Up) to side-by-side nest antennas activated with pheromone treatments.
(DOCX)
All tracks and plumes for all treatments during field trials.
Treatments and ratios are described in Fig 3.
(DOCX)
DSC scan and purity analysis for the synthetic DkPES (heating rate = 1.0°C/min, sample weight = 3.20 mg).
(DOCX)
All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.
(XLSX)
Unique mixtures of pheromone components are commonly identified in insects, and have been shown to increase attractiveness towards conspecifics when reconstructed at the natural ratio released by the signaler. In previous field studies of pheromones that attract female sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus, L.), putative components of the male-released m...
The European eel Anguilla anguilla has a complex life cycle that includes freshwater, seawater and morphologically distinct stages as well as two extreme long distance migrations. Eels do not feed as they migrate across the Atlantic to the Sargasso Sea but nevertheless reach sexual maturity before spawning. It is not yet clear how existing energy s...
Racemic petromyroxol (I) is isolated and chromatographically resolved.
Vertebrate genomes encode a diversity of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCR) that belong to large gene families and are used by olfactory systems to detect chemical cues found in the environment. It is not clear however, if individual receptors from these large gene families have evolved roles that are specific to certain life stages. Here, we used...
(+)- and (−)-Petromyroxol [(+)-1 and (−)-1, respectively], two novel tetrahydrofuran (THF)-diol fatty acid enantiomers, were isolated from water conditioned with larval sea lamprey. We herein describe their isolation and subsequent resolution using chiral chromatography. The absolute configuration of each enantiomer was determined by a combination...
Background
The vertebrate brain plays a critical role in the regulation of sexual maturation and reproduction by integrating environmental information with developmental and endocrine status. The European eel Anguilla anguilla is an important species in which to better understand the neuroendocrine factors that control reproduction because it is an...
Introduction Most studies of lamprey species have found very low concentrations of sex steroids in the plasma, casting doubts on possible roles of sex steroids in lamprey reproduction. We hypothesized that the low circulatory steroid concentrations are due to a lack of steroid binding proteins (SBP's) that specifically transport and store these hor...
A new hexahydrophenanthrene sulfate was identified from water conditioned with sea lamprey larvae ( Petromyzon marinus ) and named petromyzonin. Its structure was unequivocally elucidated on the basis of spectroscopic analyses including comparison with spectra of known compounds. The absolute configuration was determined by electronic circular dich...
The aim of this study was to test whether physiological changes are paralleled
by changes in olfactory function during different stages of the European
eel’s life-cycle. Sensitivity to diverse odorants (amino acids, bile acids,
bile fluids, Na+ and Ca2+) was assessed by extra-cellular recording from the
olfactory nerve of seawater or freshwater and...
Fish behaviourists are increasingly turning to non-invasive measurement of steroid hormones in holding water, as opposed to blood plasma. When some of us met at a workshop in Faro, Portugal, in September, 2007, we realised that there were still many issues concerning the application of this procedure that needed resolution, including: Why do we mea...
Sensory systems involved in osmoregulation are poorly understood in fish. Our study aimed to test whether olfaction is one of the senses that modulate the osmoregulatory process using as a model the European eel, a catadromous fish with rapid adaptation to environmental salinity changes. Our work showed that eels have a high olfactory sensitivity t...
This review provides selected examples of several types of chemical signals and cues important for the social behavior of
fish. Alarm substances evoke antipredator behaviors, typified by increased shoaling, refuging, freezing, dashing, area avoidance,
and reduced foraging. Migratory pheromones are employed by some fish species that migrate long dis...
The European eel lives most of its life in fresh water but reproduces in sea water. Thus, we hypothesize that eel uses olfaction to sense environmental salinity and is consequently involved in physiological processes such as osmoregulation and migration. For this reason we expect that olfactory responses to the main cations present in the aquatic e...
Teleosts have high olfactory sensitivity to bile salts. To assess whether this phenomenon is involved in intra-specific chemical communication alone, or is part of a more ;broad range' sensitivity to bile salts produced by heterospecifics, we investigated possible differences in the odour of bile between the sexes and among different species - the...
European eels are important in both scientific and economicterms. Unfortunately, current populations are becoming increasingly endangered and urgent management is needed. Several aspects of eel biology, together with their highly developed sense of smell, suggest that chemical communication could be involved at key stages of their life-history. Thu...
Eels of the Genus Anguilla are important fish in both scientific and economic terms. Unfortunately, current stocks of the European eel in particular (Anguilla anguilla L.) are becoming increasingly endangered. Chemical communication plays important roles in several key aspects of fish biology. Due to its complex life-cycle, the eel offers a unique...
Fish behaviourists are increasingly turning to non-invasive measurement of steroid hormones in holding water, as opposed to blood plasma. When some of us met at a workshop in Faro, Portugal, in September, 2007, we realised that there were still many issues concerning the application of this procedure that needed resolution, including: Why do we mea...
The present study assessed the olfactory potency of conspecific bile fluid and skin mucus in the European eel Anguilla anguilla by the electro-olfactogram. Immature males showed high olfactory sensitivity to conspecific bile, giving large amplitude responses in a concentration-dependent manner with estimated thresholds of detection of < 1:10(7) (n...
To investigate the effect of stocking density on growth and sex ratio in European eel, four constant density conditions were tested during the transition from the glass to the elver stage for 90 days (Period 1). The test conditions combined the weight of fish per unit surface or volume (surface density or volume density) resulting in four experimen...
This study was aimed to investigate whether sexual maturation of immature male eels could be stimulated indirectly by placing them in contact with either male (Minj) or female (Finj) eels in which sexual maturation had been stimulated directly by weekly injections of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) or salmon pituitary extract (SPE), respectively...
Two experiments were carried out in which male and female tench Tinca tinca were placed in individual containers and tritiated steroids then added to the water. Water samples were collected over the next 6 or 7 h and the fish then sacrificed, bled and the gall bladder removed. Radioactivity was counted in all the samples. Over the course of the exp...
We studied the recovery dynamics of physiological and tissue stress indicators after an acute nitrite intoxication episode (9.3 mM NO2−N for 18 h) in Siberian sturgeon yearlings (82±2 g). Nitrite intoxication resulted in a significant accumulation of the toxicant in the skeletal musculature, gills, liver, and blood plasma, provoking a severe methae...
Exposure of Siberian sturgeon (Acipenser baeri) yearlings (172.0+/-18 g; mean+/-S.D.) to several NO(2)(-)-N concentrations (0, 25, 130, 180 and 275 mg/l) was studied for 72 h in static tests. At 72 h, the median-lethal concentration of NO(2)(-)-N was 130 mg/l in water with high chloride content (130.5 mg/l). Nitrite exposure produced high levels of...
Questions
Question (1)
It is known that enantiomers of some compounds can elicit different behavioral or olfactory responses in several species. I would like to know if such differences can be explained by triggering different transduction pathways. For instance, can one enantiomer trigger the adenylyl cyclase pathway and other enantiomer the inositol phosphate pathway in the same receptor?
