Meeting Abstract
Increasingly frequent and virulent coral diseases threaten global reef cover, especially in the Caribbean where outbreaks are exacerbated by warming waters. Some corals appear to be more resistant to these diseases than others, but the physiological mechanisms underlying these differences in susceptibility are unknown. The objective of this research was to identify molecular characteristics associated with differences in susceptibility to bacterial pathogens between individual corals within a population. We analyzed the baseline (pre-treatment) gene expression of twenty-eight genotypes of Montastraea cavernosa from a pristine reef, the Texas Flower Gardens Banks, and then subjected those same corals to a bacterial challenge with Vibrio coralliilyticus, a putative agent of tissue-loss diseases in corals. Individuals that experienced more mortality upregulated genes associated with growth (e.g. ribosomal proteins) and downregulated genes for intracellular signaling components. These findings reveal the physiological mechanisms underlying differences in disease outcomes between individual corals and increase our general understanding of coral immunity. Furthermore, we could potentially use these gene expression signatures correlating with increased disease resistance as biomarkers to monitor reef health in situ or to select the most robust corals for reef restoration efforts.
