Elucidating gene expression adaptation of phylogenetically divergent coral holobionts under heat stress

Viridiana Avila-Magaña (), Bishoy Kamel, Michael DeSalvo, Kelly Gómez-Campo, Susana Enríquez, Hiroaki Kitano, Rori V. Rohlfs, Roberto Iglesias-Prieto and Mónica Medina ()
Additional contact information
Viridiana Avila-Magaña: The Pennsylvania State University
Bishoy Kamel: University of New Mexico
Michael DeSalvo: University of California
Kelly Gómez-Campo: The Pennsylvania State University
Susana Enríquez: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Hiroaki Kitano: The Systems Biology Institute
Rori V. Rohlfs: San Francisco State University
Roberto Iglesias-Prieto: The Pennsylvania State University
Mónica Medina: The Pennsylvania State University

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: Abstract As coral reefs struggle to survive under climate change, it is crucial to know whether they have the capacity to withstand changing conditions, particularly increasing seawater temperatures. Thermal tolerance requires the integrative response of the different components of the coral holobiont (coral host, algal photosymbiont, and associated microbiome). Here, using a controlled thermal stress experiment across three divergent Caribbean coral species, we attempt to dissect holobiont member metatranscriptome responses from coral taxa with different sensitivities to heat stress and use phylogenetic ANOVA to study the evolution of gene expression adaptation. We show that coral response to heat stress is a complex trait derived from multiple interactions among holobiont members. We identify host and photosymbiont genes that exhibit lineage-specific expression level adaptation and uncover potential roles for bacterial associates in supplementing the metabolic needs of the coral-photosymbiont duo during heat stress. Our results stress the importance of integrative and comparative approaches across a wide range of species to better understand coral survival under the predicted rise in sea surface temperatures.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25950-4 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-25950-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-25950-4

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().