Journal
MOLECULAR ECOLOGY
Volume 26, Issue 13, Pages 3472-3483Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/mec.14130
Keywords
Acropora digitifera; Cnidaria; coral resilience; microRNA
Funding
- Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Development, University of the Philippines Diliman [131313 PNSE]
- International Foundation for Science [A/5380-1]
- Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquaculture and Natural Resources Research and Development, Department of Science and Technology
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Coral reefs are diverse ecosystems of great ecological and economic importance. However, corals are vulnerable to a variety of stressors, including rising seawater temperatures, and yet little is known about the genetic mechanisms underlying their survival and adaptation to stress. Like other animals, corals possess genes for key members of the microRNA (miRNA) machinery. miRNAs are short RNAs that regulate diverse cellular processes, including organismal stress response, through post-transcriptional repression of gene transcripts. Through small RNA sequencing, we identified 26 miRNAs in the coral, Acropora digitifera. Many of the identified miRNAs are novel, while eight are conserved with miRNAs previously identified in other cnidarians. One of the identified miRNAs is differentially expressed in coral tissues exposed to acute thermal stress. This thermally responsive miRNA putatively regulates multiple pathways of the organismal stress response, DNA/RNA expression regulation, repair mechanisms, tissue morphogenesis, and signalling. We propose a model by which miRNA regulation allows the coral to mount a robust stress response through sequestration of a pool of nontranslated transcripts encoding stress response proteins. Release of miRNA-mediated repression under stress conditions may result in rapid and abundant translation of proteins that help the coral maintain cellular homoeostasis. These findings highlight the potential importance of miRNAs in the thermal resilience of corals.
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