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Heat stress compromises epithelial integrity in the coral, Acropora hyacinthus

It is well understood that heat stress causes bleaching in corals. Much work has focused on the way heat stress disrupts corals’ symbiotic relationship with endosymbiotic algal dinoflagellate, Symbiodiniaceae, a process called bleaching. However, the damage to the coral tissue that occurs during the...

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Autor principal: Traylor-Knowles, Nikki
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6396749/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30828497
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6510
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author Traylor-Knowles, Nikki
author_facet Traylor-Knowles, Nikki
author_sort Traylor-Knowles, Nikki
collection PubMed
description It is well understood that heat stress causes bleaching in corals. Much work has focused on the way heat stress disrupts corals’ symbiotic relationship with endosymbiotic algal dinoflagellate, Symbiodiniaceae, a process called bleaching. However, the damage to the coral tissue that occurs during the bleaching process and, importantly, the factors that contribute to subsequent recovery, are not well understood. I hypothesize that the host tissue damage created by heat stress initiates cascades of wound healing factors that maintain epithelial integrity. These factors may be found to contribute to the coral’s potential capacity to recover. In this study, I present evidence that heat stress causes damage to the coral host tissue and that collagen is present in the gastrodermis of heat-stressed corals. I found that, during the early stages of bleaching, an important transcription factor for wound healing, Grainyhead, is expressed throughout the gastrodermis, where the cellular and tissue rearrangements occur. Lastly, using phylogenetics, I found that cnidarian Grainyhead proteins evolved three distinct groups and that evolution of this protein family likely happened within each taxonomic group. These findings have important implications for our study of coral resiliency in the face of climate change.
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spelling pubmed-63967492019-03-01 Heat stress compromises epithelial integrity in the coral, Acropora hyacinthus Traylor-Knowles, Nikki PeerJ Marine Biology It is well understood that heat stress causes bleaching in corals. Much work has focused on the way heat stress disrupts corals’ symbiotic relationship with endosymbiotic algal dinoflagellate, Symbiodiniaceae, a process called bleaching. However, the damage to the coral tissue that occurs during the bleaching process and, importantly, the factors that contribute to subsequent recovery, are not well understood. I hypothesize that the host tissue damage created by heat stress initiates cascades of wound healing factors that maintain epithelial integrity. These factors may be found to contribute to the coral’s potential capacity to recover. In this study, I present evidence that heat stress causes damage to the coral host tissue and that collagen is present in the gastrodermis of heat-stressed corals. I found that, during the early stages of bleaching, an important transcription factor for wound healing, Grainyhead, is expressed throughout the gastrodermis, where the cellular and tissue rearrangements occur. Lastly, using phylogenetics, I found that cnidarian Grainyhead proteins evolved three distinct groups and that evolution of this protein family likely happened within each taxonomic group. These findings have important implications for our study of coral resiliency in the face of climate change. PeerJ Inc. 2019-02-26 /pmc/articles/PMC6396749/ /pubmed/30828497 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6510 Text en ©2019 Traylor-Knowles http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Marine Biology
Traylor-Knowles, Nikki
Heat stress compromises epithelial integrity in the coral, Acropora hyacinthus
title Heat stress compromises epithelial integrity in the coral, Acropora hyacinthus
title_full Heat stress compromises epithelial integrity in the coral, Acropora hyacinthus
title_fullStr Heat stress compromises epithelial integrity in the coral, Acropora hyacinthus
title_full_unstemmed Heat stress compromises epithelial integrity in the coral, Acropora hyacinthus
title_short Heat stress compromises epithelial integrity in the coral, Acropora hyacinthus
title_sort heat stress compromises epithelial integrity in the coral, acropora hyacinthus
topic Marine Biology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6396749/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30828497
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6510
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