Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2025
DOI
10.21203/rs.3.rs-6025431/v1
Publication Title
Research Square
Pages
27 pp.
Abstract
Climate change has caused drastic declines in corals. As sessile organisms, corals acclimate to environmental shifts through genome-wide changes in gene expression, epigenetic modifications, and alterations in microbiome composition. However, alternative splicing (AS), a conserved mechanism of stress response in many organisms, has been under-explored in corals. Using short-term acute thermal stress assays, we investigated patterns of AS in the scleractinian coral Acropora cervicornis during response to low (33°C), medium (35°C), and high (37°C) heat stress and subsequent overnight recovery. Our findings demonstrate reproducible dynamic shifts in AS of at least 40 percent of all genes during response to heat treatment and the recovery phase. The relative proportion of AS increased in response to heat stress and was primarily dominated by intron retention in specific classes of transcripts, including those related to splicing regulation itself. While AS returned to baseline levels post-exposure to low heat, AS persisted even after reprieve from higher levels of heat stress, which was associated with irreversible loss of photosynthetic efficiency of the symbiont. Our findings demonstrate that, although animals, corals are more plant-like in their likely usage of AS for regulating thermal stress response and recovery.
Rights
© 2025 The Authors.
Published under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License.
Data Availability
Article states: "Data reported in this publication is available under BioProject PRJNA1213837 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/1213837) under the ‘Global Search for Genetic Regulators of Coral Resilience to Thermal Stress’ umbrella BioProject PRJNA749006 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA749006). Associated data analysis code can be accessed at https://github.com/kate-stankiewicz/Acer_globalSearch_AltSplice. Supplementary Tables can be accessed on Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14867193."
Original Publication Citation
Baliga, N., Stankiewicz, K., Valenzuela, J., Turkarslan, S., Wu, W.-J., Gomez-Campo, K., Locatelli, N., Conn, T., Radice, V., Parker, K., Alderdice, R., Bay, L., Voolstra, C., Barshis, D., & Baums, I. (2025). Alternative splicing in a coral during heat stress acclimation and recovery. Research Square. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-6025431/v1
Repository Citation
Baliga, Nitin; Stanklewicz, Kathryn; Valenzuela, Jacob; Turkarsian, Serdar; Wu, Wei-Ju; Gomez-Campo, Kelly; Locatelli, Nicolas; Conn, Trinity; Radice, Veronica; Parker, Katherine; Alderdice, Rachel; Bay, Line; Voolstra, Christian; Barshis, Daniel; and Baums, Iliana, "Alternative Splicing in a Coral During Heat Stress Acclimation and Recovery" (2025). Biological Sciences Faculty Publications. 629.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/biology_fac_pubs/629
ORCID
0000-0003-1510-8375 (Barshis)