[Coral-List] New paper on coral epigenetics

Manuel ARANDA manuel.aranda at kaust.edu.sa
Wed Feb 12 08:22:23 UTC 2020


Dear fellow coral-listers,


I'd like to draw your attention to our latest paper on the transmission of
epigenetic information from corals to their progeny. Together with our
collaborators from NYU Abu Dhabi (Emily, Youssef and John), we sequenced
and analysed DNA methylation patterns from eight Platygyra daedalea
colonies from Abu Dhabi (Arabian Gulf) and Fujairah (Gulf of Oman) and
across three developmental stages (Adult, gametes and larvae).



Unlike vertebrates, we observed that methylation patterns in corals do not
"reset" across generations but are passed on to the gametes and larvae. We
further observed differences in DNA methylation patterns based on sampling
origin (Abu Dhabi vs. Fujairah) and developmental stages (adult vs. gamete
vs. larva) that correlated with the underlying biology. Interestingly, we
also fond that a substantial number of genes (~500) showed a strong
correlation between their methylation pattern and larval survival in
response to heat stress. Combined with our previous work that outlined the
changes in methylation patterns in response to environmental challenges,
this implies that corals might not only be able to acclimatise to stressors
(e.g. warmer/saltier/more acidic waters) by modulating DNA methylation
patterns, but to also pass down the respective "epialleles" to their
progeny to boost survivability rates.



This paper can be accessed via this link:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0687-2

Cheers,
Mani

-- 

Manuel Aranda Lastra
Associate Professor
Coral Symbiomics Lab
Red Sea Research Center
Building 2, 2216, 4700 KAUST
Thuwal 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Mobile: +966 544700661
https://coralsymbiomics.kaust.edu.sa
 <https://twitter.com/CoralSymBiomiX>

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