Abstract
Stony coral tissue loss disease, first observed in Florida in 2014, has now spread along the entire Florida Reef Tract and on reefs in many Caribbean countries. The disease affects a variety of coral species with differential outcomes, and in many instances results in whole-colony mortality. We employed untargeted metabolomic profiling ofMontastraea cavernosacorals affected by stony coral tissue loss disease to identify metabolic markers of disease. Herein, extracts from apparently healthy, diseased, and recoveredMontastraea cavernosacollected at a reef site near Ft. Lauderdale, Florida were subjected to liquid-chromatography mass spectrometry-based metabolomics. Unsupervised principal component analysis reveals wide variation in metabolomic profiles of healthy corals of the same species, which differ from diseased corals. Using a combination of supervised and unsupervised data analyses tools, we describe metabolite features that explain variation between the apparently healthy corals, between diseased corals, and between the healthy and the diseased corals. By employing a culture-based approach, we assign sources of a subset of these molecules to the endosymbiotic dinoflagellates, Symbiodiniaceae. Specifically, we identify various endosymbiont- specific lipid classes, such as betaine lipids, glycolipids, and tocopherols, which differentiate samples taken from apparently healthy corals and diseased corals. Given the variation observed in metabolite fingerprints of corals, our data suggests that metabolomics is a viable approach to link metabolite profiles of different coral species with their susceptibility and resilience to numerous coral diseases spreading through reefs worldwide.
Highlights
Corals are holobionts consisting of the coral animal, photosynthetic dinoflagellate endosymbionts commonly referred to as zooxanthellae, and a complex microbiome (Rohwer et al, 2002; Maire et al, 2021)
The extracted metabolites were stored frozen at −20◦C in a dried form and the metabolomics data acquisition was performed in a single run to avoid batch-tobatch variation
The corresponding data on these features was first subjected to principal component analysis (PCA) to visualize metabolomic variation between samples
Summary
Corals are holobionts consisting of the coral animal, photosynthetic dinoflagellate endosymbionts (family Symbiodiniaceae) commonly referred to as zooxanthellae, and a complex microbiome (Rohwer et al, 2002; Maire et al, 2021). Members of the holobiont contribute to the fitness of the coral animal Factors including increased ocean temperatures, ocean acidification, pollution, and disease outbreaks present continual challenges to the health of corals (Richardson, 1998; Rosenberg and Ben-Haim, 2002; Rogers and Weil, 2010; Pandolfi et al, 2011; Hoegh-Guldberg et al, 2017; Grottoli et al, 2018; Montilla et al, 2019; Howells et al, 2020). Understanding intraspecies and interspecies variability in genotypes, metabolomes, microbiomes, and other physiological factors such as bleaching history of field corals is critical to investigating their contribution to disease resistance and susceptibility, which are essential to effective management and restoration efforts
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