Project description:The Crown-of-Thorns starfish (COTS), Acanthaster planci, is a highly fecund predator of reef-building corals distributed throughout the Indo-Pacific. COTS population outbreaks cause substantial loss of coral cover, diminishing the integrity and resilience of the reef ecosystems thus increasing their susceptibility to climate change. We sequenced genomes of A. planci from the Great Barrier Reef, Australia (GBR) and Okinawa, Japan (OKI) to guide identification of species-specific peptide communication with potential applications in mitigation strategies. The genome-encoded proteins excreted and secreted into the surrounding seawater by COTS forming aggregations and by those escaping the predatory giant triton snail, Charonia tritonis, were identified LC-MS/MS.
2017-04-06 | PXD005409 | Pride
Project description:Population genomics of Indo-Pacific Aedes
Project description:This experiment assessed the natural gene expression variation present between colonies of the Indo-Pacific reef-building coral Acropora millepora, and additionally explored whether gene expression differed between two different intron haplotypes according to intron 4-500 in a carbonic anhydrase homolog. This study found no correspondence between host genotype and transcriptional state, but found significant intercolony variation, detecting 488 representing unique genes or 17% of the total genes analyzed. Such transcriptomic variation could be the basis upon which natural selection can act. Underlying variation could potentially allow reef corals to respond to different environments. Whether this source of variation and the genetic responses of corals and its symbionts will allow coral reefs to cope to the rapid pace of global change remains unknown.
Project description:Rhizophora mucronata Lam., a prevalent mangrove variety of Indo-Pacific region is reported to defy saline stress up to 40 ppt, but the genome or transcriptome behind this tolerance is yet to be investigated. As an initiative to create a reference sequence database, we have forged a set of 46,366,348 paired end RNA-Seq raw reads of Rhizophora mucronata Lam. leaf tissues from Illumina HiSeq 2500 platform (SRA study accession SRP093200 ; Bioproject accession PRJNA345155). All possible gene transcripts were then reconstructed from the RNA raw seq data and 93960 Trinity assembled, annotated transcripts that are being actively expressed at a given time is proposed (TSA accession GGEC00000000). To estimate gene transcript expression, we used Bowtie 2 programme and successfully aligned back up to 95.14% of the filtered reads to the assembled transcriptome. We allowed up to 1-mismatches in the seed region (length =31bp) and all multiple mapped position were reported. Of all filtered reads about 95.14% of reads from each sample were properly aligned back to the assembled transcriptome. Overall we found 52,153 unique transcripts which have expression >=1 FPKM.