Project description:Over the past several decades, corals worldwide have been affected by global warming, experiencing severe bleaching events that have often lead to coral death. The symbiotic Red Sea coral Stylophora pistillata is considered an opportunistic ‘r’ strategist, thriving in relatively unstable and unpredictable environments, and it is considered a stress-tolerant species. This study aimed to examine S. pistillata gene expression and to clarify the cellular pathways that are active during short-term heat stress caused by an increase from 24°C to 34°C over a 10-day period. Total RNA was extracted from heat-stressed coral fragments, labeled and hybridized against a designated S. pistillata custom microarray containing approximately 12,000 genes. Our results show that the heat stress reaction was sighted from 32°C and intensified significantly after 34°C treatment. Protein interaction networks of up- and down-regulated genes were constructed. The main clustering groups of up-regulated genes were ER stress and ER protein folding, cell cycle, ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis, cell death and cell death regulation and cellular stress response genes. These genes were enriched in cellular pathways related to the unfolded protein response (UPR) in the ER, ER-associated degradation (ERAD) and ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis. An analysis of the down-regulated genes yielded different clusters of genes related to extracellular matrix and actin organization, collagen, negative regulation of cell death and the Notch and Wnt signaling pathways. Genes encoding redox regulation proteins and molecular chaperones may be considered accurate “early warning genes”, while genes related to sensing and repairing DNA damage are severe heat-related genes. Here, we suggest that during short-term heat stress, S. pistillata might divert cellular energy into mechanisms such as UPR and ERAD at the expense of growth and biomineralization processes in an effort to recover from the stress.
Project description:Purpose: There is a dearth of knowledge regarding the molecular pathology of growth anomaly in corals. We investigated the gene expression profile of Montipora capitata metatranscriptomes from healthy and diseased (growth anomaly) coral colonies to elucidate differentially expressed genes. Methods: mRNA profiles of coral tissue (including symbionts) were generated from three different tissue states: healthy, affected and unaffected. Healthy tissue was collected from coral colonies not affected by growth anomaly. Affected tissue was collected from coral growth anomaly lesions. Unaffected tissue was collected from coral colonies affected by growth anomaly.
Project description: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 explore the idea that transcriptional stability is a key determinant of longevity and negligible senescence, age-related gene expression was examined in three tissues of the red sea urchin (Aristotle’s lantern muscle, esophagus and radial nerve cord). Genome-wide transcriptional profiling using RNA-Seq revealed remarkable stability in muscle and esophagus with very few age-related changes in gene expression. In contrast, expression of more than 900 genes was significantly altered with age in radial nerve cord including genes involved in nerve function, signaling, metabolism, cytoskeleton, transcriptional regulation and chromatin modification. Notably, there was an upregulation in expression of genes involved in synaptogenesis and axonogenesis suggesting enhanced nervous system activity with age. Among the signaling pathways affected by age, there was a downregulation in expression of key components of the mTOR signaling pathway and an upregulation of negative regulators of this pathway. This was accompanied by a reduction in expression of genes involved in protein synthesis and mitochondrial function and an increase in expression of genes that promote autophagy. Downregulation of the mTOR pathway together with the other observed changes reveals a unique age-related gene expression profile in the red sea urchin nervous system that may contribute to mitigation of the detrimental effects of aging in this long-lived animal.