Abstract

SummaryStony corals are colonial cnidarians that sustain the most biodiverse marine ecosystems on Earth: coral reefs. Despite their ecological importance, little is known about the cell types and molecular pathways that underpin the biology of reef-building corals. Using single-cell RNA sequencing, we define over 40 cell types across the life cycle of Stylophora pistillata. We discover specialized immune cells, and we uncover the developmental gene expression dynamics of calcium-carbonate skeleton formation. By simultaneously measuring the transcriptomes of coral cells and the algae within them, we characterize the metabolic programs involved in symbiosis in both partners. We also trace the evolution of these coral cell specializations by phylogenetic integration of multiple cnidarian cell type atlases. Overall, this study reveals the molecular and cellular basis of stony coral biology.

Highlights

  • Scleractinian corals, known as stony corals, are the main builders of the reefs that constitute the most diverse marine ecosystems, providing home to roughly a quarter of all marine species (Reaka-Kudla, 1997)

  • A multi-stage cell type atlas of S. pistillata To study S. pistillata cell type diversity, we sampled single cells from three life stages: adult stony colonies, primary polyps that are starting to produce skeleton, and non-calcifying free-swimming larvae (Figure 1C), all collected from the Gulf of Eilat/Aqaba in the Red Sea

  • We detected in our scRNA-seq dataset a similar number of genes (31,425) to those seen in S. pistillata bulk RNA-seq studies (30,821) (Liew et al, 2018; Radecker et al, 2021; Figure S1K), and the aggregated scRNA-seq gene expression levels correlated well with levels measured bulk RNA-seq analyses (Rs = 0.803) (Figure S1L)

Read more

Summary

Introduction

Scleractinian corals, known as stony corals, are the main builders of the reefs that constitute the most diverse marine ecosystems, providing home to roughly a quarter of all marine species (Reaka-Kudla, 1997). Stony corals belong to the Hexacorallia, a lineage within the Anthozoa class in the Cnidaria phylum. Larval settlement is followed by rapid accretion of a protein rich skeletal organic matrix and extracellular calcium carbonate crystals (in the form of aragonite) to form a stony skeleton (Akiva et al, 2018; Vandermeulen and Watabe, 1973). Through this process of biomineralization, stony corals build the main mineral substrate of marine reefs (Drake et al, 2020; Tambutteet al., 2011)

Methods
Results
Discussion
Conclusion
Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call