| Literature DB >> 31993121 |
Keren Maor-Landaw1, Madeleine J H van Oppen1,2, Geoffrey I McFadden1.
Abstract
Coral-dinoflagellate symbiosis underpins the evolutionary success of corals reefs. Successful exchange of molecules between the cnidarian host and the Symbiodiniaceae algae enables the mutualistic partnership. The algae translocate photosynthate to their host in exchange for nutrients and shelter. The photosynthate must traverse multiple membranes, most likely facilitated by transporters. Here, we compared gene expression profiles of cultured, free-living Breviolum minutum with those of the homologous symbionts freshly isolated from the sea anemone Exaiptasia diaphana, a widely used model for coral hosts. Additionally, we assessed expression levels of a list of candidate host transporters of interest in anemones with and without symbionts. Our transcriptome analyses highlight the distinctive nature of the two algal life stages, with many gene expression level changes correlating to the different morphologies, cell cycles, and metabolisms adopted in hospite versus free-living. Morphogenesis-related genes that likely underpin the metamorphosis process observed when symbionts enter a host cell were up-regulated. Conversely, many down-regulated genes appear to be indicative of the protective and confined nature of the symbiosome. Our results emphasize the significance of transmembrane transport to the symbiosis, and in particular of ammonium and sugar transport. Further, we pinpoint and characterize candidate transporters-predicted to be localized variously to the algal plasma membrane, the host plasma membrane, and the symbiosome membrane-that likely serve pivotal roles in the interchange of material during symbiosis. Our study provides new insights that expand our understanding of the molecular exchanges that underpin the cnidarian-algal symbiotic relationship.Entities:
Keywords: Breviolum minutum; Exaiptasia diaphana; free‐living; in hospite; symbiosis; transporters
Year: 2019 PMID: 31993121 PMCID: PMC6972872 DOI: 10.1002/ece3.5910
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Ecol Evol ISSN: 2045-7758 Impact factor: 2.912
Figure 1Clustering of free‐living cultured algal cells and in hospite samples. (a) Heat map of hierarchical clustering of all genes. Generated using TPM values (transcript per million) and based on Euclidian distances. (b) Multidimensional scaling (MDS) plot and percent of variance captured by the MDS dimensions. (c) Pie chart of percent of constitutively expressed, up‐ and down‐regulated genes in in hospite comparing to cultured B. minutum
Figure 2Enriched Gene Ontologies (GO) for differentially expressed genes of in hospite symbionts comparing to free‐living algae. Clusters of GO categories are presented for up‐regulated (red) and down‐regulated (green) genes and plotted against a calculated enrichment score. See Table S3 for details of the GOs categorizes within each group. The number of genes in each group is indicated on the column
Figure 3Enriched transport‐related Gene Ontologies (GO) for differentially expressed genes of in hospite symbionts comparing to free‐living algae. Clusters of GO categories are presented for up‐regulated (red) and down‐regulated (green) genes and plotted against a calculated enrichment score. See Table S3 for details of the GOs categorizes within each group. The number of genes in each group is indicated on the column
Figure 4Illustration of differentially expressed transporters in the holobiont cell. Up‐ and down‐regulated transporters in the symbiont cell are presented along with up‐regulated host transporters. The transporter's label is indicative of its predicted domains or annotation. Subcellular location prediction (Almagro Armenteros et al., 2017) is demonstrated within the holobiont illustration. Two of the host's transporters that are predicted to the vacuole, are suspected to be localized on the symbiosome membrane, and are marked with a dashed line. See Tables S1, S5, and S6 for more details