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Coastal strains of marine Synechococcus species exhibit increased tolerance to copper shock and a distinctive transcriptional response relative to those of open-ocean strains.

ABSTRACT: Copper appears to be influencing the distribution and abundance of phytoplankton in marine environments, and cyanobacteria are thought to be the most sensitive of the phytoplankton groups to copper toxicity. By using growth assays of phylogenetically divergent clades, we found that coastal strains of marine Synechococcus species were more tolerant to copper shock than open-ocean strains. The global transcriptional response to two levels of copper shock were determined for both a coastal strain and an open-ocean strain of marine Synechococcus species using whole-genome expression microarrays. Both strains showed an osmoregulatory-like response, perhaps as a result of increasing membrane permeability. This could have implications for marine carbon cycling if copper shock leads to dissolved organic carbon leakage in Synechococcus species. The two strains additionally showed a common reduction in levels of photosynthesis-related gene transcripts. Contrastingly, the open-ocean strain showed a general stress response, whereas the coastal strain exhibited a more specifically oxidative or heavy-metal acclimation response that may be conferring tolerance. In addition, the coastal strain activated more regulatory elements and transporters, many of which are not conserved in other marine Synechococcus strains and may have been acquired by horizontal gene transfer. Thus, tolerance to copper shock in some marine Synechococcus strains may in part be a result of a generally increased ability to sense and respond in a more stress-specific manner.

SUBMITTER: Stuart RK

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2725496 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Coastal strains of marine Synechococcus species exhibit increased tolerance to copper shock and a distinctive transcriptional response relative to those of open-ocean strains.

Stuart Rhona K RK Dupont Chris L CL Johnson D Aaron DA Paulsen Ian T IT Palenik Brian B

Applied and environmental microbiology 20090605 15

Copper appears to be influencing the distribution and abundance of phytoplankton in marine environments, and cyanobacteria are thought to be the most sensitive of the phytoplankton groups to copper toxicity. By using growth assays of phylogenetically divergent clades, we found that coastal strains of marine Synechococcus species were more tolerant to copper shock than open-ocean strains. The global transcriptional response to two levels of copper shock were determined for both a coastal strain a ...[more]

PMID: 19502430

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Project description:We have looked at the transcriptional response of well characterised Synechococcus open ocean (WH8102) and coastal (CC9311) isolates to two DNA damaging agents, mitomycin C and ethidium bromide, using whole genome expression microarrays. The coastal strain, which was able to grow on higher concentrations of both chemicals, showed differential regulation of a larger proportion of its genome following M-bM-^@M-^Xtoxic shockM-bM-^@M-^Y treatment with each agent. Many of the orthologous genes in these strains, including those encoding sensor kinases, showed different transcriptional responses, with the CC9311 genes more likely to show significant changes for each tested treatment. While the overall response of each strain was considerably different, there were distinct transcriptional responses common to both strains observed for each DNA damaging agent, linked to the mode of action of each chemical. In both CC9311 and WH8102 there was evidence of SOS response induction under mitomycin C treatment, with genes encoding recA, the lexA repressor and umuC significantly upregulated in this experiment but not under ethidium bromide treatment. Conversely, ethidium bromide treatment tended to result in upregulation of the DNA-directed RNA polymerase genes, not observed following mitomycin C treatment. Interestingly, a large number of genes residing on putative genomic island regions of each genome also showed significant upregulation under one or both chemical treatments. In this series four conditions have been analyzed. These are 2 hour incubations (shock treatment) with ethidium bromide (EB, final conc 2ug/mL) and mitomycin C (MC, final conc 0.5 ug/mL) for Synechococcus sp. WH8102 and CC9311. For each slide, an experimental RNA sample was labeled with Cy3 or Cy5 and was hybridized with a reference RNA from a control sample (no addition of chemical agent) labeled with the other Cy dye. There are six slides per condition, each with at least two biological replicates and three technical replicates, including at least one flip-dye comparison. Each slide contains six replicate spots per gene.

Dataset Information

Coastal strains of marine Synechococcus species exhibit increased tolerance to copper shock and a distinctive transcriptional response relative to those of open-ocean strains.

Publications

Coastal strains of marine Synechococcus species exhibit increased tolerance to copper shock and a distinctive transcriptional response relative to those of open-ocean strains.

Similar Datasets

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