Early structural and functional changes in Baikal Sculpin gills exposed to suspended soot microparticles in experiment.

The toxic influence of soot microparticles on terrestrial organisms has been well studied, although there is scarce data on how microparticles could affect hydrobionts. We performed a first-ever study of the short-term (5 days) impact of furnace soot (0.005 g/L) on the structural and functional features of gill cells in the Baikal Sculpin species Paracottus knerii, Dybowski, 1874.

Complete mitochondrial genomes of representatives of two endemic sculpin families (Perciformes: Cottoidei) from Baikal - the world's largest and deepest lake.

In this study, five new mitogenomes from four endemic Lake Baikal sculpins were determined: (Dybowski, 1874) (GB#MW732165), (Yakovlev, 1890) (GB#MW732163), and (Dybowski, 1874) (GB#MW732164) (Family Cottocomephoridae - Bighead sculpins), and from two specimens of Taliev, 1949 (GB##MW732166, MW732167) from Family Abyssocottidae (Deep-water sculpins). Together with recently published mitogenomes of Baikal Oilfishes (Sandel et al. 2017), the first mitogenome-based phylogenetic tree for all three endemic Baikal sculpin families is presented.