Differential NOS expression in freshwater and aestivating Protopterus dolloi (lungfish): heart vs kidney readjustments

African lungfish Protopterus dolloi is an obligatory air-breather, which aestivates in a cocoon during the dry season. Aestivation associateswith functional modifications in many tissues and organs, including heart and kidney. Due to its pleiotropic modulatory effects,nitric oxide (NO), generated by nitric oxide synthases (NOSs), may coordinate organ rearrangement, allowing adaptive adjustmentsunder stressful environmental conditions. By immunofluorescence, Western blotting and NADPH-diaphorase, we examined cardiacand renal localization and activity of NOSs isoforms in both freshwater (FW) and aestivating [6 days (6DA) and 40 days (40DA) ofestivation] P. dolloi. In heart and kidney endothelial NOS (eNOS) is the major isoform with respect to inducible and neuronal NOS(iNOS and nNOS, respectively). Cardiac eNOS locates in the epicardium, the trabecular endothelial endocardium, and myocardiocytesof both FW and aestivating fish. Western blotting revealed that cardiac eNOS expression increases in 6DA, but decreases in 40DA fish.In FW fish kidney eNOS is present in vascular endothelial cells and in podocytes of renal corpuscles. In tubular epithelial cells it isrestricted to the apical pole. With aestivation, both renal localization and expression of eNOS increase. NADPH-diaphorase revealedan enhancement of cardiac and renal NOS activities during aestivation. Results suggest that in P. dolloi NO contributes, in anautocrine-paracrine fashion, to cardiac and renal readjustments during aestivation. Our findings are of evolutionary interest, sincethey document for the first time the presence of a NOS system in a ancestral fish, indicative of deep phylogenetic roots of NObio-synthesis.