Abstract
Photosynthetic microalgae are potentially yielding sources of different high-value secondary metabolites. Salinity is a complex stress that influences various metabolite-related pathways in microalgae. To obtain a clear view of the underlying metabolic pathways and resolve contradictory information concerning the transcriptional regulation of Dunaliella species in salt stress conditions, RNA-seq meta-analysis along with systems levels analysis was conducted. A p-value combination technique with Fisher method was used for cross species meta-analysis on the transcriptomes of two Dunaliella salina and Dunaliella tertiolecta species. The potential functional impacts of core meta-genes were surveyed based on gene ontology and network analysis. In the current study, the integration of supervised machine-learning algorithms with RNA-seq meta-analysis was performed. The analysis shows that the lipid and nitrogen metabolism, structural proteins of photosynthesis apparatus, chaperone-mediated autophagy, and ROS-related genes are the keys and core elements of the Dunaliella salt stress response system. Cross-talk between Ca2+ signal transduction, lipid accumulation, and ROS signaling network in salt stress conditions are also proposed. Our novel approach opens new avenues for better understanding of microalgae stress response mechanisms and for selection of candidate gene targets for metabolite production in microalgae.
Highlights
Microalgae are photosynthetic organisms that are considered potential sources of different secondary metabolites such as β-carotene and lipid (Alcantara et al, 2013; Klein et al, 2013)
The first dataset from D. tertiolecta (PRJNA385719) contains six biological samples which were grown in 0.08 M NaCl–treated ATCC media, harvested during stationary phase, and sequenced using Illumina MiSeq platform
Transcript length ranged from 110 bps to 15,458 bps
Summary
Microalgae are photosynthetic organisms that are considered potential sources of different secondary metabolites such as β-carotene and lipid (Alcantara et al, 2013; Klein et al, 2013). It has been proposed that efficiency of CO2 fixation and the production rate of lipids and secondary metabolites are affected by different stresses such as salt, light, temperature, pH, Meta-Analysis of Salt Stress Responsive Pathways and nutrient starvation (Takagi, 2006; Devi and Venkata, 2012). These are common stresses found in industrial production of microalgae and are usually considered to hamper production. Attempts have been made to manipulate the stress response; progress has been limited due to the lack of understanding of the basic metabolism of algae and how the different stresses impact metabolic pathways (Shin et al, 2015)
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