Transcriptomic differences between bleached and unbleached hydrozoan Millepora complanata following the 2015-2016 ENSO in the Mexican Caribbean

PeerJ

article

Víctor H. Hernández Elizárraga¹  Norma Olguín-López¹  Rosalina Hernández-Matehuala¹  Juan Caballero-Pérez²  César Ibarra-Alvarado³  Alejandra Rojas-Molina³ 

[1] Posgrado en Ciencias Químico Biológicas, Facultad de Química, Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro;European Bioinformatics Institute;Laboratorio de Investigación Química y Farmacológica de Productos Naturales, Facultad de Química, Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro

关键词: Millepora complanata;    RNA-seq;    Transcriptomics;    Coral bleaching;    Thermal stress;    Hydrocoral;    Fire coral;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.14626

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

The 2015-2016 El Niño-southern oscillation or “ENSO” caused many M. complanata colonies that live in the Mexican Caribbean to experience extensive bleaching. The purpose of this work was to analyze the effect of bleaching on the cellular response of M. complanata, employing a transcriptomic approach with RNA-seq. As expected, bleached specimens contained a significantly lower chlorophyll content than unbleached hydrocorals. The presence of algae of the genera Durusdinium and Cladocopium was only found in tissues of unbleached M. complanata, which could be associated to the greater resistance that these colonies exhibited during bleaching. We found that 299 genes were differentially expressed in M. complanata bleached colonies following the 2015-2016 ENSO in the Mexican Caribbean. The differential expression analysis of bleached M. complanata specimens evidenced enriched terms for functional categories, such as ribosome, RNA polymerase and basal transcription factors, chaperone, oxidoreductase, among others. Our results suggest that the heat-shock response mechanisms displayed by M. complanata include: an up-regulation of endogenous antioxidant defenses; a higher expression of heat stress response genes; up-regulation of transcription-related genes, higher expression of genes associated to transport processes, inter alia. This study constitutes the first differential gene expression analysis of the molecular response of a reef-forming hydrozoan during bleaching.

【 授权许可】

CC BY