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The role acclimatization, adaptation, and symbiosis in the acquisition of heat tolerance in reef-building corals

ABSTRACT: Transcriptional responses to heat stress were assayed in early life-history stages of 11 crosses between and amongst Acropora tenuis colonies originating from reefs along the Great Barrier Reef. We identified a single nucleotide polymorphism outlier (Fst=0.89) between populations in the unannotated gene Acropora25324, which exhibited constitutively higher gene expression in populations with dams originating from Curd reef, a far north, warm adapted inshore reef, suggesting an important role of this gene in adaptation to warmer environments. Further, juveniles exposed to heat and in symbiosis with heat-evolved Symbiodiniaceae displayed intermediate transcriptional responses between its progenitor taxa (Cladocopium goreaui) and the more stress tolerant Durusdinium trenchii, indicating that the development of heat tolerance acquisition is potentially a conserved evolutionary process in Symbiodiniaceae. These findings reveal the underlying mechanisms, and for the first time, their relative contribution, of coral responses to climate change and provide a foundation for optimizing conservation methods like assistant gene flow.

ORGANISM(S): Acropora tenuis

PROVIDER: GSE176051 | GEO | 2022/07/08

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Transcriptional profiling of gene responses in liver in the coral reef fish Pomacentrus moluccensis in response to different types of environmental stress: cold, heat, hypoxic and hyposmotic shock. Goal was to determine the common effects of different types of environmental stress on gene expression as well as responses unique to different stressors. Abstract from Kassahn et al. BMC Genomics (2007) 8:358 Background While our understanding of the importance of transcriptional regulation for biological function is continuously growing, we still know comparatively little about how environmentally-induced stress affects gene expression in vertebrates and how consistent transcriptional stress responses are across different types of environmental stress. Results In this study, we looked for a genetic measure of environmental stress and used a multi-stressor approach to identify components of a common stress response as well as components unique to different types of environmental stress. We exposed individuals of the coral reef fish Pomacentrus moluccensis to hypoxic, hyposmotic, cold and heat shock and measured the responses of approximately 16,000 genes in liver. We also compared winter and summer responses to heat shock to examine the capacity for such responses to vary with acclimation to different ambient temperatures. We identified a series of gene functions that were consistently involved in all stress responses examined here, suggesting common effects of stress on biological function. These common responses were achieved by the regulation of largely independent sets of genes and the responses of individual genes varied greatly across different stress types. However, we were able to identify groups of co-regulated genes, the genes within which shared similar functions. Given current estimates of climatic change, we were particularly interested in the response to prolonged heat exposure. In total, 324 gene loci were differentially expressed following exposure to heat over five days. The functions of these heat-responsive genes suggest that prolonged heat stress leads to oxidative stress and protein damage, challenge of the immune system, and a re-allocation of energy sources. Conclusion This is the first environmental genomic study to measure gene regulation in response to different environmental stressors in a natural population of a warm-adapted ectothermic vertebrate. This study offers insight into the effects of environmental stress on biological function and sheds light on the expected sensitivity of coral reef fishes to elevated temperatures in the future. Keywords: Stress response

Project description:<p>Coral reef ecosystems are incredibly diverse marine biomes that rely on nutrient cycling by microorganisms to sustain high productivity in generally oligotrophic regions of the ocean. Understanding the composition of extracellular reef metabolites in seawater, the small organic molecules that serve as the currency for microorganisms, may provide insight into benthic-pelagic coupling as well as the complexity of nutrient cycling in coral reef ecosystems. Jardines de la Reina, Cuba is an ideal environment to examine extracellular metabolites across protected and high-quality reefs. Here, we used metabolic methods to quantify specific known metabolites of interest (targeted approach) and to survey trends in metabolite feature composition (untargeted approach) from surface and reef depth (6 – 14 m) seawater overlying forereefs in Jardines de la Reina. We found that untargeted metabolite feature composition was fairly similar between reef depth and surface seawater across the archipelago, corresponding with other biogeochemical and physicochemical measurements and suggesting that environmental conditions were largely homogenous across forereefs within Jardines de la Reina. Additionally, we quantified 32 of 53 detected metabolites, including amino acids, nucleosides, vitamins, and other metabolic intermediates. Two of the quantified metabolites, riboflavin and 5ʹ-methylthioadenosine (MTA), displayed interesting trends by depth and geographic location, respectively. Riboflavin concentrations were higher in reef depth compared to surface seawater, suggesting that riboflavin may be produced by reef organisms at depth and degraded in the surface through photochemical oxidation. 5ʹ-MTA concentrations increased significantly within the central region of the archipelago, displaying biogeographic patterns that warrant further investigation. Here we lay the groundwork for future investigations of variations in metabolite composition across reefs, sources and sinks of reef metabolites, and changes in metabolites over environmental, temporal, and reef health gradients.</p>

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The role acclimatization, adaptation, and symbiosis in the acquisition of heat tolerance in reef-building corals

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