Project description:Purpose: There is a dearth of knowledge regarding the molecular pathology of growth anomaly in corals. We investigated the gene expression profile of Montipora capitata metatranscriptomes from healthy and diseased (growth anomaly) coral colonies to elucidate differentially expressed genes. Methods: mRNA profiles of coral tissue (including symbionts) were generated from three different tissue states: healthy, affected and unaffected. Healthy tissue was collected from coral colonies not affected by growth anomaly. Affected tissue was collected from coral growth anomaly lesions. Unaffected tissue was collected from coral colonies affected by growth anomaly.
Project description:Coral bleaching in response to stress deprives coral colonies of energy-providing algal symbionts, potentially disrupting colony energy balance. In M. capitata, thermal bleaching typically occurs at the beginning of a new gametogenic cycle, depriving parent colonies of symbionts just as oocyte formation begins. However, this species is able to recover from bleachin through a variety of plastic responses and produce viable gametes on schedule, even though oocytes from bleached colonies are significantly smaller than from non-bleached. We performed mass spectrometry proteomics on the gamete bundles (eggs and sperm) produced from bleached and non-bleached colonies. The data here were collected with data dependent acquisition; an additional data independent acquisition dataset has been uploaded to Panorama Web.
