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Faster Crystallization during Coral Skeleton Formation Correlates with Resilience to Ocean Acidification.

ABSTRACT: The mature skeletons of hard corals, termed stony or scleractinian corals, are made of aragonite (CaCO₃). During their formation, particles attaching to the skeleton's growing surface are calcium carbonate, transiently amorphous. Here we show that amorphous particles are observed frequently and reproducibly just outside the skeleton, where a calicoblastic cell layer envelops and deposits the forming skeleton. The observation of particles in these locations, therefore, is consistent with nucleation and growth of particles in intracellular vesicles. The observed extraskeletal particles range in size between 0.2 and 1.0 μm and contain more of the amorphous precursor phases than the skeleton surface or bulk, where they gradually crystallize to aragonite. This observation was repeated in three diverse genera of corals, Acropora sp., Stylophora pistillata─differently sensitive to ocean acidification (OA)─and Turbinaria peltata, demonstrating that intracellular particles are a major source of material during the additive manufacturing of coral skeletons. Thus, particles are formed away from seawater, in a presumed intracellular calcifying fluid (ICF) in closed vesicles and not, as previously assumed, in the extracellular calcifying fluid (ECF), which, unlike ICF, is partly open to seawater. After particle attachment, the growing skeleton surface remains exposed to ECF, and, remarkably, its crystallization rate varies significantly across genera. The skeleton surface layers containing amorphous pixels vary in thickness across genera: ∼2.1 μm in Acropora, 1.1 μm in Stylophora, and 0.9 μm in Turbinaria. Thus, the slow-crystallizing Acropora skeleton surface remains amorphous and soluble longer, including overnight, when the pH in the ECF drops. Increased skeleton surface solubility is consistent with Acropora's vulnerability to OA, whereas the Stylophora skeleton surface layer crystallizes faster, consistent with Stylophora's resilience to OA. Turbinaria, whose response to OA has not yet been tested, is expected to be even more resilient than Stylophora, based on the present data.

SUBMITTER: Schmidt CA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8796227 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Using standard morphometric methods and gene expression profiling with a DNA microarray, we explored the impacts of high CO2 conditions on development of the sea urchin, Lytechinus pictus, a pelagic larvae that forms a calcium carbonate endoskeleton. Larvae were raised from fertilization to pluteus stage in seawater with elevated CO2 conditions based upon IPCC emissions scenarios B1 (540ppm CO2) and A1FI (970ppm CO2). Larval L. pictus were cultured in seawater treated with three different concentrations of CO2. We aerated water in culture chambers with air that had been mixed to different CO2 concentrations chosen from IPCC predictions of future atmospheric CO2 levels (28). The B1 scenario, one of the most optimistic, predicts a stabilization of atmospheric CO2 levels at ~540 ppm by 2100, and the A1F1 scenario, which, reflecting a more âbusiness as usualâ scenario, predicts atmospheric CO2 levels of ~970 ppm by 2100. Compressed air (~380 ppm CO2) was used as a control condition. The culture chambers were 20 L buckets medified to allow aeration bubbles of the experimental gas to mix with and gently stir the culture water without contacting the larvae. Replacement seawater (0.35 Î¼m filtered) was added at a constant rate of 0.5 L hr-1. Water pH of each chamber was monitored daily using a Radiometer Analytical PHM240 pH meter. Adult L. pictus were maintained in flowing seawater at ambient temperature (~15-18 ÂºC) and fed kelp until use. Spawning was induced by coelomic injection of 0.5 M KCl, and eggs were collected in 0.35 Î¼m-filtered seawater. Eggs from 5 females were combined in approximately equal concentrations. Sperm from a single male was collected in the same way, diluted with filtered seawater and added to the egg mixture; thus, all the larvae are half-siblings. Immediately following fertilization, embryos were split into 12 culture chambers providing four replicates of the three CO2 treatments. At the 48 hour time point, a sample of 40,000 larvae was removed from each of the 8 cultures in the 380 and 970 ppm treatments and stored in1 mL Trizol at -80 ÂºC for later RNA analysis. The larval cDNA samples from each treatment were competitively hybridized on each microarray following a balanced incomplete block design (BIBD) with respect to the assignment of treatments to arrays. In this way, differential expression between all pairs of treatments is estimated with equal precision. Although dye swaps of technical replicates were not used, treatment and dye effects are orthogonal to one another, i.e. treatment effects can be estimated independently of dye effects.

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Faster Crystallization during Coral Skeleton Formation Correlates with Resilience to Ocean Acidification.

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