Meeting Abstract
Analysis of differentially expressed genes under different stressors or development stages is a common method for investigating physiological response mechanisms of organisms and their tissues. But notably, gene expression in individual cells is often noisy and dynamic and the expression patterns of genetically identical cells under the same environment can be widely different. This gene expression noise has been shown to significantly impact the fitness of unicellular organisms. However, the influence of noise on the relationship between genotype and phenotype in multicellular organisms remains unclear. Reef-building corals are a promising system in which to evaluate the ecological and evolutionary significance of gene expression noise as asexual clonal reproduction is a common life-history strategy. We analysed gene expression variability between replicate clonal fragments (~ramets) of ten Acropora cervicornis genotypes growing in a common garden nursery. Hundreds of genes exhibiting high inter-ramet variability, or noise, were identified. Different genotypes varied in the top ontology enrichments identified among noisy genes, but genes related to structural organization were enriched in all genotypes. Almost half of genotypes also exhibited enrichment of genes related to toxin activity and energy metabolism in noisy genes. Patterns of expression noise will be correlated with both global expression and other physiological trait responses of ramets following one year of transplantation to novel reef environments in the Lower Florida Keys to quantify the role of expression noise in acclimatization to environmental variation.
