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Experimental ocean acidification alters the allocation of metabolic energy.

ABSTRACT: Energy is required to maintain physiological homeostasis in response to environmental change. Although responses to environmental stressors frequently are assumed to involve high metabolic costs, the biochemical bases of actual energy demands are rarely quantified. We studied the impact of a near-future scenario of ocean acidification [800 µatm partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2)] during the development and growth of an important model organism in developmental and environmental biology, the sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. Size, metabolic rate, biochemical content, and gene expression were not different in larvae growing under control and seawater acidification treatments. Measurements limited to those levels of biological analysis did not reveal the biochemical mechanisms of response to ocean acidification that occurred at the cellular level. In vivo rates of protein synthesis and ion transport increased ?50% under acidification. Importantly, the in vivo physiological increases in ion transport were not predicted from total enzyme activity or gene expression. Under acidification, the increased rates of protein synthesis and ion transport that were sustained in growing larvae collectively accounted for the majority of available ATP (84%). In contrast, embryos and prefeeding and unfed larvae in control treatments allocated on average only 40% of ATP to these same two processes. Understanding the biochemical strategies for accommodating increases in metabolic energy demand and their biological limitations can serve as a quantitative basis for assessing sublethal effects of global change. Variation in the ability to allocate ATP differentially among essential functions may be a key basis of resilience to ocean acidification and other compounding environmental stressors.

SUBMITTER: Pan TC

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4403215 | biostudies-other | 2015 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Experimental ocean acidification alters the allocation of metabolic energy.

Pan T-C Francis TC Applebaum Scott L SL Manahan Donal T DT

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20150330 15

Energy is required to maintain physiological homeostasis in response to environmental change. Although responses to environmental stressors frequently are assumed to involve high metabolic costs, the biochemical bases of actual energy demands are rarely quantified. We studied the impact of a near-future scenario of ocean acidification [800 µatm partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2)] during the development and growth of an important model organism in developmental and environmental biology, the sea urch ...[more]

PMID: 25825763

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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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Experimental ocean acidification alters the allocation of metabolic energy.

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Experimental ocean acidification alters the allocation of metabolic energy.

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