The intertidal marine periwinkle, Littorina littorea, have developed various strategies to deal with cyclic exposures to anoxic and/or freezing stresses when out of water at low tide. With promising translational research potential, evolutionarily conserved microRNAs (miRNAs) have recently become a focus of animal stress response studies. Using RNA-seq, the current study explores the conserved hepatopancreas miRNAs in facilitating snail stress survival. Overall, stress-specific miRNA responses were overserved. Anoxia led to substantial differential miRNA expression patterns, whereas freezing stress showed a relatively high degree of individual variance in miRNA expression. Pathway analysis identified miRNA-related stress survival adaptations, such as cell proliferation. Additionally, machine learning-based gene selection identified seven hepatopancreas miRNAs critical to distinguish between snails under either stress conditions. Our study demonstrated that conserved miRNAs reflect survival adaptations by marine periwinkles under anoxic or frozen conditions, and thus further establishes these snails as an optimal stress model suited for translational research.

潮间带海洋长春花，Littorina littorea，已经开发出各种策略来应对在低潮时离开水面时循环暴露于缺氧和/或冻结压力。由于具有有希望的转化研究潜力，进化上保守的 microRNA (miRNA) 最近已成为动物应激反应研究的焦点。目前的研究使用 RNA-seq，探索了保守的肝胰腺 miRNAs 在促进蜗牛应激生存方面的作用。总体而言，应激特异性 miRNA 反应被过度服务。缺氧导致显着差异的 miRNA 表达模式，而冷冻应激显示 miRNA 表达的相对高度的个体差异。通路分析确定了与 miRNA 相关的应激生存适应性，例如细胞增殖。此外，基于机器学习的基因选择确定了七种肝胰腺 miRNA，对于区分两种压力条件下的蜗牛至关重要。我们的研究表明，保守的 miRNA 反映了海洋长春花在缺氧或冷冻条件下的生存适应性，从而进一步将这些蜗牛确立为适合转化研究的最佳应激模型。