Meeting Abstract
Alarming decline of coral reefs has motivated efforts to understand mechanisms of coral resilience to stress. A popular method for addressing such ecological molecular questions is genome-wide gene expression profiling. However, in isolation, these studies cannot tell if gene regulation is specific to a particular stress or general to all coral stress. Here we investigate the hypothesis that the coral genus Acropora possess an Environmental Stress Response (ESR): a stereotyped gene expression response enacted under all forms of environmental stress. We analyze data from over 600 previously published and newly generated RNA-seq samples and show that transcriptional responses to diverse stressors are correlated, with core sets of up- and downregulated genes detectable for all but one (low pH) of the most commonly studied environmental stressors. Predictive models trained on one stress type are generally accurate in predicting stressed condition from other stressors. We conclude that a generalized Environmental Stress Response indeed exists in Acropora, and that careful consideration of this generality is important when linking genes to particular stresses such as temperature.
