Project description:Colonization of deep-sea hydrothermal vents by invertebrates was made efficient through their adaptation to a symbiotic lifestyle with chemosynthetic bacteria, the primary producers of these ecosystems. Anatomical adaptations such as the establishment of specialized cells or organs have been evidenced in numerous deep-sea invertebrates. However, very few studies detailed global inter-dependencies between host and symbionts in these ecosystems. In this study, we proposed to describe, using a proteo-transcriptomic approach, the effects of symbionts on the deep-sea mussel Bathymodiolus azoricus’ molecular biology. We induced an in situ depletion of symbionts and compared the proteo-transcriptome of the gills of mussels in three conditions: symbiotic mussels (natural population), symbiont-depleted mussels and aposymbiotic mussels
Project description:Bathymodiolid mussels dominate hydrothermal vents, cold methane/sulfide-hydrocarbon seeps, and other sites of organic enrichment. Here, we aimed to explore the innate immune system and detoxification mechanism of the deep sea mussel Bathymodiolus platifrons collected from a methane seep in the South China Sea. We sequenced the transcriptome of the mussels' gill, foot and mantle tissues and generated a transcriptomic database containing 96,683 transcript sequences. Based on GO and KEGG annotations, we reported transcripts that were related to the innate immune system, heavy metal detoxification and sulfide metabolic genes. Our in-depth analysis on the isoforms of peptidoglycan recognition protein (PGRP) that have different cellular location and potentially differential selectivity towards peptidoglycan (PGN) from gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria were differentially expressed in different tissues. We also reported a potentially novel form of metallothionein and the production of phytochelatin in B. platifrons, which has not been reported in any of its coastal relative Mytilus mussel species. Overall, the present study provided new insights into heavy metal and sulfide metabolism in B. platifrons and can be served as the basis for future molecular studies on host-symbiont interactions in cold seep mussels.