Project description:Branching coral species like the Caribbean Acroporids are long lived and reproduce asexually via breakage of branches. Fragmentation is the dominant mode of local population maintenance for these corals across much of their range. Thus, large genets with many member ramets (colonies) are common. Each of the ramets experiences different microenvironments, especially with respect to light and water flow. Here, we investigate whether colonies that are members of the same genet have different epigenomes because of differences in their microenvironments. The Florida Keys experienced a large- scale coral bleaching event in 2014-2015 caused by high water temperatures. During the event, ramets of the same coral genet bleached differently. Previous work had shown that this was unlikely to be due to their eukaryotic algal symbionts (Symbiodinium ‘fitti’) because each genet of this coral species typically harbors a single strain of S. ‘fitti’. Characterization of the microbiome via 16S tag sequencing did not provide evidence for a central role of microbiome variation in determining bleaching response. Instead, epigenetic changes were significantly correlated with the host’s genetic background, the position of the sampled polyps within the colonies (e.g. tip versus base of colony), and differences in the colonies’ condition during the bleaching event. We conclude that microenvironmental differences in growing conditions led to long-term changes in the way the ramets methylated their genomes and thus to a differential bleaching response.
Project description:Branching coral species like the Caribbean Acroporids are long lived and reproduce asexually via breakage of branches. Fragmentation is the dominant mode of local population maintenance for these corals across much of their range. Thus, large genets with many member ramets (colonies) are common. Each of the ramets experiences different microenvironments, especially with respect to light and water flow. Here, we investigate whether colonies that are members of the same genet have different epigenomes because of differences in their microenvironments. The Florida Keys experienced a large- scale coral bleaching event in 2014-2015 caused by high water temperatures. During the event, ramets of the same coral genet bleached differently. Previous work had shown that this was unlikely to be due to their eukaryotic algal symbionts (Symbiodinium ‘fitti’) because each genet of this coral species typically harbors a single strain of S. ‘fitti’. Characterization of the microbiome via 16S tag sequencing did not provide evidence for a central role of microbiome variation in determining bleaching response. Instead, epigenetic changes were significantly correlated with the host’s genetic background, the position of the sampled polyps within the colonies (e.g. tip versus base of colony), and differences in the colonies’ condition during the bleaching event. We conclude that microenvironmental differences in growing conditions led to long-term changes in the way the ramets methylated their genomes and thus to a differential bleaching response.
Project description:Acclimatization through phenotypic plasticity represents a more rapid response to environmental change than adaptation and is vital to optimize organisms’ performance in different conditions. Generally, animals are less phenotypically plastic than plants, but reef-building corals exhibit plant-like properties. They are light-dependent with a sessile and moddular construction that facilitates rapid morphological changes within their lifetime. We induced phenotypic changes by altering light exposure in a reciprocal transplant experiment and found that coral plasticity is a colony trait emerging from comprehensive morphological and physiological changes within the colony. Plasticity in skeletal features optimized coral light harvesting and utilization and paralleled with significant methylome and transcriptome modifications. Network-associated responses resulted in the identification of hub genes and clusters associated to the change in phenotype: inter-partner recognition and phagocytosis, soft tissue growth and biomineralization. Furthermore, we identified hub genes putatively involved in animal photoreception-phototransduction. These findings fundamentally advance our understanding of how reef-building corals repattern the methylome and adjust a phenotype, revealing an important role of light sensing by the coral animal to optimize photosynthetic performance of the symbionts. This SuperSeries is composed of the SubSeries listed below.
Project description:Acclimatization through phenotypic plasticity represents a more rapid response to environmental change than adaptation and is vital to optimize organisms’ performance in different conditions. Generally, animals are less phenotypically plastic than plants, but reef-building corals exhibit plant-like properties. They are light-dependent with a sessile and moddular construction that facilitates rapid morphological changes within their lifetime. We induced phenotypic changes by altering light exposure in a reciprocal transplant experiment and found that coral plasticity is a colony trait emerging from comprehensive morphological and physiological changes within the colony. Plasticity in skeletal features optimized coral light harvesting and utilization and paralleled with significant methylome and transcriptome modifications. Network-associated responses resulted in the identification of hub genes and clusters associated to the change in phenotype: inter-partner recognition and phagocytosis, soft tissue growth and biomineralization. Furthermore, we identified hub genes putatively involved in animal photoreception-phototransduction. These findings fundamentally advance our understanding of how reef-building corals repattern the methylome and adjust a phenotype, revealing an important role of light sensing by the coral animal to optimize photosynthetic performance of the symbionts.
Project description:Acclimatization through phenotypic plasticity represents a more rapid response to environmental change than adaptation and is vital to optimize organisms’ performance in different conditions. Generally, animals are less phenotypically plastic than plants, but reef-building corals exhibit plant-like properties. They are light-dependent with a sessile and moddular construction that facilitates rapid morphological changes within their lifetime. We induced phenotypic changes by altering light exposure in a reciprocal transplant experiment and found that coral plasticity is a colony trait emerging from comprehensive morphological and physiological changes within the colony. Plasticity in skeletal features optimized coral light harvesting and utilization and paralleled with significant methylome and transcriptome modifications. Network-associated responses resulted in the identification of hub genes and clusters associated to the change in phenotype: inter-partner recognition and phagocytosis, soft tissue growth and biomineralization. Furthermore, we identified hub genes putatively involved in animal photoreception-phototransduction. These findings fundamentally advance our understanding of how reef-building corals repattern the methylome and adjust a phenotype, revealing an important role of light sensing by the coral animal to optimize photosynthetic performance of the symbionts.
Project description:Reef-building corals play an important role in the marine ecosystem, and analyzing their proteomes from a structural perspective will exert positive effects on exploring their biology. Here we integrated mass spectrometry with newly published AI systems to obtain digital structural proteomes of dominant reef-building corals.