[Coral-List] Condition-specific RNA editing in Symbiodinium

[Yi Jin Liew]

Dear Coral-List,

 

I'm sure most of you are familiar with Symbiodinium, the algae that live in
symbiosis with many corals. Those working on Symbiodinium transcriptomics
often report that they don't "freak out" much under stress--the number of
differentially expressed transcripts (~2%) are often much lower than that in
other organisms (~5-20%).

 

We believe we are one step closer in understanding this enigma (without
bugging their phones). In our recently published paper [1], we describe the
discovery of RNA editing in nuclear-encoded genes of Symbiodinium
microadriaticum. RNA editing is the process where the transcript sequences
are modified post-transcriptionally, thus producing proteins that differ
slightly from the version encoded in the genome. More interestingly, when we
subjected cultures to short-term, bleaching-relevant stressors, we observed
that some genes had shifts in editing ratios that were specific to the
stressor. We postulate that RNA editing might be a low cost system for these
haploid critters to adapt to their surroundings, as they could produce
protein variants without incurring expensive and possibly deleterious
mutations in their genomes.

 

Enjoy.

 

Yours

Yi Jin LIEW

Postdoctoral Fellow

Red Sea Research Center

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology

 

[1] Liew YJ, Li Y, Baumgarten S, Voolstra CR, Aranda M (2017)
Condition-specific RNA editing in the coral symbiont Symbiodinium
microadriaticum. PLOS Genetics 13(2): e1006619.
http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.100661
9

 


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