RNA expression and disease tolerance are associated with a “keystone mutation” in the ochre sea star Pisaster ochraceus
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Abstract
An overdominant mutation in the elongation factor 1-alpha (EF1A) gene in the sea star Pisaster ochraceus has shown itself to mediate tolerance to "sea star wasting disease", a pandemic that has significantly reduced sea star populations on the Pacific coast of North America. Here we use RNA sequencing of healthy individuals to identify differences in constitutive expression of gene regions that may help explain this tolerance phenotype. Our results show that individuals carrying this single mutation have lower expression at a large contingent of gene regions, and it appears likely that the EF1A locus itself is similarly affected, with a 2-fold reduction in expression of some EF1A transcripts. Individuals without this mutation also appear to have a greater cellular response to temperature stress, which has been implicated in the outbreak of sea star wasting disease. Given the ecological significance of P. ochraceus and the key role of EF1A in cellular composition and maintenance, these results may be useful in predicting the evolutionary and demographic future for Pacific intertidal communities.
Cite this as
2017. RNA expression and disease tolerance are associated with a “keystone mutation” in the ochre sea star Pisaster ochraceus. PeerJ Preprints 5:e2990v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2990v1note This preprint is not peer-reviewed. You may wish to reference the subsequent peer-reviewed version of this article.
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This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
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Supplemental Information
Supplemental Table S1
Supplemental Table S1. Library name, EF1A genotype, RNA quality (RIN), SRA Accession, library size, righting response (seconds; standard deviation in parentheses), and percentage of reads mapped to the Trinity assembly. Libraries for Po1 and Po2 (both temperature treatments) contributed to the reduced-input assembly. All sequence data are archived at NCBI in BioProject PRJNA357374.
Supplement S2
Supplement S2. Fold change, log CPM, P-value, and FDR for Trinity fragments generated for this analysis, excluding individual Po5. Where available, BLAST identifiers are given; only BLAST hits with an e-value of < 10^-6 are included.
Additional Information
Competing Interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Author Contributions
John Wares conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Virginia K Chandler performed the experiments, analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Field Study Permissions
The following information was supplied relating to field study approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):
Collection of animals and tissues was approved by the Associate Director of the Friday Harbor Laboratories in writing.
DNA Deposition
The following information was supplied regarding the deposition of DNA sequences:
All sequence data are archived at NCBI in BioProject PRJNA357374. They will become publicly available upon request or when paper is accepted for publication.
Funding
This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (Ecology of Infectious Diseases 1015342) and the University of Georgia Research Foundation. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
