Abstract
Since the last century, episodes of coral reef bleaching and mortality have occurred almost annually in tropical or subtropical seas. When the temperature exceeds the tolerant limit of a coral–zooxanthellae holobiont, it induces physiological stress and disrupts the vulnerable fine-tuned balance between the two partners, leading to bleaching. The gene expression profiles of a scleractinian coral and its symbiotic zooxanthellae can offer important information with which to decipher this balanced relationship at the functional level of genes. Here, we sequence a full-length transcriptome of a well-known, common and frequently dominant reef-building coral, Pocillopora damicornis, to acquire gene expression information for the coral–zooxanthellae holobiont. To this end, we identify 21,926 and 465 unique genes in the coral and algal symbiont, respectively, and examine the functional enrichment among these genes based on GO (gene ontology) terms and KEGG (the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes) pathways. The results show that the zooxanthellae provide for their coral host through energy and nutrition metabolism by photosynthesis, and that both the coral host and zooxanthellae have an anti-stress molecular mechanism, though the two parties have independent abilities to survive in the short term. This work sheds light on the valuable gene expression profile of a coral–zooxanthellae holobiont and provides grounds for further molecular biological research to support ecological protection work.
Highlights
Coral reef ecosystems, which are intricate and diverse collections of species that interact with each other and the physical environment to provide a habitat for many marine organisms, have been undergoing unprecedented mass coral bleaching events in recent decades, fueled by ocean warming, ocean acidification and the massive encroachment of the predatory crown-of-thorns starfish [1,2,3,4,5]
High-quality Circular consensus sequences (CCSs) are consistent sequences obtained from subreads in each ZMW (Zero-Mode Waveguides), where the same template is sequenced multiple times to perform in-hole corrections for zero-mode waveguide holes without a reference sequence alignment
The gene expression profile of a coral–zooxanthellae holobiont forms the molecular foundation of coral reef biology
Summary
Coral reef ecosystems, which are intricate and diverse collections of species that interact with each other and the physical environment to provide a habitat for many marine organisms, have been undergoing unprecedented mass coral bleaching events in recent decades, fueled by ocean warming, ocean acidification and the massive encroachment of the predatory crown-of-thorns starfish [1,2,3,4,5]. Scleractinian coral displays a population structure typical of organisms with an intimately intracellular coexistence, containing microscopic algae called zooxanthellae, which exist with the animal in a symbiotic relationship [10,11,12]. The gene expression profile of the symbiont affects the host–symbiotic culture in corals and shows that the coral–zooxanthellae holobiont expresses messages for molecules involved with the regulation of the ecosystem to prevent bleaching
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