Sea Urchin Mesocentrotus Franciscanus Research Articles

Gene expression patterns of red sea urchins (Mesocentrotus franciscanus) exposed to different combinations of temperature and pCO2 during early development

BackgroundThe red sea urchin Mesocentrotus franciscanus is an ecologically important kelp forest herbivore and an economically valuable wild fishery species. To examine how M. franciscanus responds to its environment on a molecular level, differences in gene expression patterns were observed in embryos raised under combinations of two temperatures (13 °C or 17 °C) and two pCO2 levels (475 μatm or 1050 μatm). These combinations mimic various present-day conditions measured during and between upwelling events in the highly dynamic California Current System with the exception of the 17 °C and 1050 μatm combination, which does not currently occur. However, as ocean warming and acidification continues, warmer temperatures and higher pCO2 conditions are expected to increase in frequency and to occur simultaneously. The transcriptomic responses of the embryos were assessed at two developmental stages (gastrula and prism) in light of previously described plasticity in body size and thermotolerance under these temperature and pCO2 treatments.ResultsAlthough transcriptomic patterns primarily varied by developmental stage, there were pronounced differences in gene expression as a result of the treatment conditions. Temperature and pCO2 treatments led to the differential expression of genes related to the cellular stress response, transmembrane transport, metabolic processes, and the regulation of gene expression. At each developmental stage, temperature contributed significantly to the observed variance in gene expression, which was also correlated to the phenotypic attributes of the embryos. On the other hand, the transcriptomic response to pCO2 was relatively muted, particularly at the prism stage.ConclusionsM. franciscanus exhibited transcriptomic plasticity under different temperatures, indicating their capacity for a molecular-level response that may facilitate red sea urchins facing ocean warming as climate change continues. In contrast, the lack of a robust transcriptomic response, in combination with observations of decreased body size, under elevated pCO2 levels suggest that this species may be negatively affected by ocean acidification. High present-day pCO2 conditions that occur due to coastal upwelling may already be influencing populations of M. franciscanus.

Effect of Transport Method on Subsequent Survivorship and Gonad Yield/Quality in the Red Sea Urchin Mesocentrotus franciscanus

AbstractSea urchin gonad enhancement entails collecting adults with low gonad yields from the wild, placing them in land‐based or sea‐based captivity, and feeding them a prepared or natural diet to produce high quality/quantity gonads for marketing. Collection and transportation to the culture facility can be stressful to the urchins and cause subsequent mortalities and suboptimal gonad yield/quality. Minimizing this handling stress is critical to ensuring maximum survivorship and optimal gonad enhancement, yet very little research has examined this, with no information being available for the red sea urchin Mesocentrotus franciscanus. The present study examined survivorship, gonad yield, and gonad quality of red sea urchins 2 weeks after exposure to three 2‐h transport methods: (1) milk crates placed in two plastic fish totes filled with ambient seawater (“wet crate”), (2) sealed Styrofoam boxes filled with ambient seawater (“wet box”), and (3) sealed Styrofoam boxes without seawater, but with wet burlap placed on top of the urchins (“dry box”). While no gonadal parameters significantly differed between transportation methods, the percentage of survivorship for both the wet boxes and wet crates was 100%, while that for the dry boxes was 58.3% after 2 weeks, indicating that wet transport should be preferred over dry transport for red sea urchins.

Unique age-related transcriptional signature in the nervous system of the long-lived red sea urchin Mesocentrotus franciscanus

The red sea urchin, Mesocentrotus franciscanus, is one the earth’s longest-lived animals, reported to live more than 100 years with indeterminate growth, life-long reproduction and no increase in mortality rate with age. To gain insight into mechanisms associated with longevity and negligible senescence, age-related transcriptional profiles were examined in tissues of the red sea urchin. Genome-wide transcriptional profiling using RNA-Seq revealed few age-related changes in gene expression in muscle and esophagus tissue. In contrast, radial nerve showed an unexpected level of complexity with the expression of 3,370 genes significantly altered more than two-fold with age, including genes involved in nerve function, signaling, metabolism, transcriptional regulation and chromatin modification. There was an age-related upregulation in expression of genes involved in synaptogenesis, axonogenesis and neuroprotection suggesting preservation of neuronal processes with age. There was also an upregulation in expression of positive regulators and key components of the AMPK pathway, autophagy, proteasome function, and the unfolded protein response. This unique age-related gene expression profile in the red sea urchin nervous system may play a role in mitigating the detrimental effects of aging in this long-lived animal.

An ancient evolutionary connection between Ribonuclease A and EndoU families.

The ribonuclease A family of proteins is well studied from the biochemical and biophysical points of view, but its evolutionary origins are obscure, as no sequences homologous to this family have been reported outside of vertebrates. Recently, the spatial structure of the ribonuclease domain from a bacterial polymorphic toxin was shown to be closely similar to the structure of vertebrate ribonuclease A. The absence of sequence similarity between the two structures prompted a speculation of convergent evolution of bacterial and vertebrate ribonuclease A-like enzymes. We show that bacterial and homologous archaeal polymorphic toxin ribonucleases with a known or predicted ribonuclease A-like fold are distant homologs of the ribonucleases from the EndoU family, found in all domains of cellular life and in viruses. We also detected a homolog of vertebrate ribonucleases A in the transcriptome assembly of the sea urchin Mesocentrotus franciscanus. These observations argue for the common ancestry of prokaryotic ribonuclease A-like and ubiquitous EndoU-like ribonucleases, and suggest a better-grounded scenario for the origin of animal ribonucleases A, which could have emerged in the deuterostome lineage, either by an extensive modification of a copy of an EndoU gene, or, more likely, by a horizontal acquisition of a prokaryotic immunity-mediating ribonuclease gene.

The effects of temperature and pCO2 on the size, thermal tolerance and metabolic rate of the red sea urchin (Mesocentrotus franciscanus) during early development

The red sea urchin Mesocentrotus franciscanus supports a highly valuable wild fishery along the West Coast of North America, but despite its importance in the ecology of kelp forests and as a harvested species, little is known about how M. franciscanus responds to abiotic stressors associated with ocean warming and acidification during its early development. Here, embryos of M. franciscanus were raised under combinations of two temperatures (13 °C and 17 °C) and two pCO2 levels (475 μatm and 1050 μatm) that represent current and future coastal environments. Elevated pCO2 levels led to a decrease in body size of gastrula stage embryos while temperature had no effect. At the prism stage, both temperature and pCO2 affected body size. The warmer temperature increased the body size of prism stage embryos, offsetting the stunting effect of elevated pCO2 on growth. Thermal tolerance, which was estimated by exposing prism stage embryos to a range of temperatures and estimating the survivorship, was found to be slightly higher in those raised under warmer temperatures. The developmental temperature and pCO2 conditions under which embryos were raised did not have an effect on the metabolic rate as measured by oxygen consumption rate at the prism stage. This study provides important insights into a species of high ecological and economic value. Overall, early development under elevated pCO2 conditions may adversely impact M. franciscanus while moderate warming may improve growth and thermal tolerance. Understanding how fishery species respond to abiotic stressors will facilitate our predictive capacity of how climate change will impact future populations, which links to issues such as sustainability and food security.

The evolution of gametic compatibility and compatibility groups in the sea urchin Mesocentrotus franciscanus: An avenue for speciation in the sea.

The generation of reproductive incompatibility between groups requires a rare genotype with low compatibility to increase in frequency. We tested the hypothesis that sexual conflict driven by the risk of polyspermy can generate compatibility groups in gamete recognition proteins (GRPs) in the sea urchin Mesocentrotus franciscanus. We examined variation in the sperm (bindin) and egg (EBR1) GRPs, how this variation influences fertilization success and how allele frequencies shift in these GRPs over time. The EBR1 gene is a large, 4595 amino acid protein made up of 27 thrombospondin type 1 domain (TSP) and 20 C1s/C1r, uEGF and bone morphogenic protein subdomain (CUB) repeats. Two TSP and two CUB repeats each demonstrate two common non-synonymous haplotypes (alleles). Sperm bindin and one of these EBR1 repeats (TSP8) shift allele frequencies from one common to two common types over an approximate 200 year interval associated with the removal of predatory sea otters and rising sea urchin abundances; the egg receptor shifts first, followed by the sperm ligand. Laboratory crosses indicate that the historically common sperm and egg gamete recognition proteins have high compatibility as do the new common proteins, with mismatches having lower compatibility. This process of creating compatibility groups sets the stage for reproductive isolation and speciation.

Disentangling the effects of fishing and environmental forcing on demographic variation in an exploited species

Species targeted by fishing often recover in abundance and size within marine protected areas (MPAs) resulting in increased reproductive potential. However, in some situations, concomitant changes in the abundance of predators, competitors, or prey within MPAs, or strong gradients in the surrounding environmental seascape may counteract the purported benefits making it more difficult to predict how species will respond to protection. We used a network of MPAs in California, spanning a large temperature gradient, to investigate the drivers of demographic variability in the commercially important red sea urchin Mesocentrotus franciscanus. We investigated how demographic metrics varied geographically in response to protection, temperature, and the main sea urchin resource, the giant kelp Macrocystis pyrifera. We found significant conservation benefits to this fished sea urchin within MPAs designated six years prior to the beginning of this study. Within MPAs, red sea urchins were generally larger resulting in greater adult biomass density and reproductive biomass density. In addition, kelp density was an important explanatory variable of all red sea urchin demographic traits examined (adult size, gonadosomatic index [GSI], density, adult biomass density, and reproductive biomass density). Kelp density was positively correlated with red sea urchin GSI and adult size, but the relationships with density, adult biomass density, and reproductive biomass density were complex and the directionality changed depending on the region (or environmental setting) examined. Our results demonstrate that kelp, red sea urchin reproduction, and the effects of spatial management on demographic processes are tightly coupled with the oceanographic regime.

Gene expression profiling during the embryo-to-larva transition in the giant red sea urchin Mesocentrotus franciscanus.

In echinoderms, major morphological transitions during early development are attributed to different genetic interactions and changes in global expression patterns that shape the regulatory program for the specification of embryonic territories. In order more thoroughly to understand these biological and molecular processes, we examined the transcriptome structure and expression profiles during the embryo‐to‐larva transition of a keystone species, the giant red sea urchin Mesocentrotus franciscanus. Using a de novo assembly approach, we obtained 176,885 transcripts from which 60,439 (34%) had significant alignments to known proteins. From these transcripts, ~80% were functionally annotated allowing the identification of ~2,600 functional, structural, and regulatory genes involved in developmental process. Analysis of expression profiles between gastrula and pluteus stages of M. franciscanus revealed 791 differentially expressed genes with 251 GO overrepresented terms. For gastrula, up‐regulated GO terms were mainly linked to cell differentiation and signal transduction involved in cell cycle checkpoints. In the pluteus stage, major GO terms were associated with phosphoprotein phosphatase activity, muscle contraction, and olfactory behavior, among others. Our evolutionary comparative analysis revealed that several of these genes and functional pathways are highly conserved among echinoids, holothuroids, and ophiuroids.

Mitochondrial genome architecture of the giant red sea urchin Mesocentrotus franciscanus (Strongylocentrotidae, Echinoida)

The complete mitochondrial genome of the Californian giant red sea urchin Mesocentrotus franciscanus has been determined. It has a length of 15,650 bp and contains the same 37 genes found in other metazoans (13 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNA genes, and two rRNA genes). Only five tRNA genes and the Nad6 gene are coded on the minus strand. There were 14 identified small intergene regions (2 to 24 bp) and a large non-coding region (125 bp) located between the tRNA-T and tRNA-P. The overall base composition of this genome is 29.8% A, 27.6% T, 29.7% C, and 17.5% G, with a slight A + T bias of 59.4%. The most frequent start codon is ATG (11 genes) whereas TAA is the most frequent stop codon (10 genes). Overall, gene arrangement pattern, gene content and genome organization is similar to other echinoids