Oxidative stress, apoptosis activation and symbiosis disruption in giant clam Tridacna crocea under high temperature

Abstract

Giant clams are one of the most important animals in coral reef ecosystem, and its growth and reproduction are being threatened by heat stress due to global warming. In the present study, the symbiont density, the crucial enzyme activities and the transcriptome were investigated in the outer mantle of giant clam Tridacna crocea after the acute exposure of high temperature. The density of symbiotic zooxanthellae decreased significantly during 12–24 h, with the minimum level (7.75 × 105 cell cm−2, p < 0.05) at 12 h after heat stress. The activities of superoxide dismutase in the heat stress group was significantly lower than that in the control group at 24 h after heat stress, while no significant change in the activities of catalase was observed during the entire stress process. The activation level of caspase3 began to increase significantly at 12 h (1.22-fold, p < 0.05), and reached the highest level at 24 h (1.38-fold, p < 0.05) after heat stress. Six paired-end libraries were sequenced in two groups, including the heat stress and control group at 12 h after heat stress. Through the assembling of 187,116,632 paired-end reads with lengths of 2 × 150 bp, a total of 26,676 genes were obtained which derived from giant clam. Bioinformatics analysis revealed 47 significantly upregulated and 88 significantly downregulated genes at 12 h after the treatment. There were 12 overrepresented GO terms for significantly upregulated genes, mostly related to unfolded protein binding and ATP binding, whereas no GO term was overrepresented for significantly downregulated genes. These results collectively suggest high temperature could induce excessive oxidative stress through the repressed antioxidant ability, the apoptosis activated by the unfolded protein response, and further the collapse of the symbiosis between host and symbiont, which has been threatening the growth and reproduction of the giant clam T. crocea.