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Gene expression plasticity as a mechanism of coral adaptation to a variable environment

Abstract

Local adaptation is ubiquitous, but the molecular mechanisms that give rise to this ecological phenomenon remain largely unknown. A year-long reciprocal transplant of mustard hill coral (Porites astreoides) between a highly environmentally variable inshore habitat and a more stable offshore habitat demonstrated that populations exhibit phenotypic signatures that are consistent with local adaptation. We characterized the genomic basis of this adaptation in both coral hosts and their intracellular symbionts (Symbiodinium sp.) using genome-wide gene expression profiling. Populations differed primarily in their capacity for plasticity: following transplantation to a novel environment, inshore-origin coral expression profiles became significantly more similar to the local population's profiles than those in offshore-origin corals. Furthermore, elevated plasticity of the environmental stress response expression was correlated with lower susceptibility to a natural summer bleaching event, suggesting that plasticity is adaptive in the inshore environment. Our results reveal a novel genomic mechanism of resilience to a variable environment, demonstrating that corals are capable of a more diverse molecular response to stress than previously thought.

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Figure 1: Population-level variation in genome-wide gene expression plasticity.
Figure 2: Hierarchical clustering dendrogram of module eigengenes (the first principal component of a module, representative of the overall expression profile for genes within that module) and heat maps of module-trait correlations.
Figure 3: Inshore coral hosts show greater gene expression plasticity of major symbiont-correlated modules than offshore corals.

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Acknowledgements

G. Aglyamova prepared the library of samples for Illumina sequencing. M. Strader created the GIS map of the Florida Keys. Bioinformatic analyses were carried out using the computational resources of the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). Funding for this study was provided by NSF DDIG award DEB-1311220 to C.D.K. and M.V.M.

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C.D.K. and M.V.M. conceived and designed experiments. C.D.K. performed experiments, analysed data and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. Both authors contributed to revisions.

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Correspondence to Carly D. Kenkel.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary Figures 1–8 and Supplementary Table 1 (PDF 1053 kb)

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Kenkel, C., Matz, M. Gene expression plasticity as a mechanism of coral adaptation to a variable environment. Nat Ecol Evol 1, 0014 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-016-0014

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