Abstract
In light of global reef decline new methods to accurately, cheaply, and quickly evaluate coral metabolic states are needed to assess reef health. Metabolomic profiling can describe the response of individuals to disturbance (i.e., shifts in environmental conditions) across biological models and is a powerful approach for characterizing and comparing coral metabolism. For the first time, we assess the utility of a proton-nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-NMR)-based metabolomics approach in characterizing coral metabolite profiles by 1) investigating technical, intra-, and inter-sample variation, 2) evaluating the ability to recover targeted metabolite spikes, and 3) assessing the potential for this method to differentiate among coral species. Our results indicate 1H-NMR profiling of Porites compressa corals is highly reproducible and exhibits low levels of variability within and among colonies. The spiking experiments validate the sensitivity of our methods and showcase the capacity of orthogonal partial least squares discriminate analysis (OPLS-DA) to distinguish between profiles spiked with varying metabolite concentrations (0 mM, 0.1 mM, and 10 mM). Finally, 1H-NMR metabolomics coupled with OPLS-DA, revealed species-specific patterns in metabolite profiles among four reef-building corals (Pocillopora damicornis, Porites lobata, Montipora aequituberculata, and Seriatopora hystrix). Collectively, these data indicate that 1H-NMR metabolomic techniques can profile reef-building coral metabolomes and have the potential to provide an integrated picture of the coral phenotype in response to environmental change.
Highlights
Coral reefs are among the most productive ecosystems in the world [1]
Intra, and Inter-Colony Variability Variability in Porites compressa 1H-nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra was explored over 284 spectral bins describing metabolite profiles
A Kruskal-Wallis comparison of relative standard deviation (RSD) scores quantifies these visual patterns, where technical and intra-colony (15.2%) scores were not statistically different from one another, but both were significantly lower than inter-colony scores (p,0.001, 35% and 38%, Fig. 1B)
Summary
Coral reefs are among the most productive ecosystems in the world [1] They produce up to 70061012 g C year21 [2] and provide important services (e.g., fisheries habitat, coastal protection, and promotion of tourism) that support tropical and subtropical coastal communities worldwide [3]. While there are challenges and limitations in interpreting these large datasets [20], global analyses of genes [21], transcripts [22], and proteins [23] are advancing our understanding of holobiont responses to ecological disturbances. These techniques are currently too expensive to apply in reef-wide monitoring programs. There is still a need for cost-effective molecular tools that can be proactively used to assess coral metabolic states
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