RNA expression and disease tolerance are associated with a "keystone mutation" in the ochre sea star Pisaster ochraceus

V Katelyn Chandler; John P Wares

doi:10.7717/peerj.3696

RNA expression and disease tolerance are associated with a "keystone mutation" in the ochre sea star Pisaster ochraceus

PeerJ. 2017 Aug 15:5:e3696. doi: 10.7717/peerj.3696. eCollection 2017.

Authors

V Katelyn Chandler¹, John P Wares^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Genetics, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, United States of America.
² Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, United States of America.

Abstract

An overdominant mutation in an intron of the elongation factor 1-α (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 mutation have lower expression at a large contingent of gene regions. 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, these results may be useful in predicting the evolutionary and demographic future for Pacific intertidal communities.

Keywords: Disease; EF1A; Elongation factor 1-alpha; Overdominance; Pisaster ochraceus; RNA expression; Sea star wasting disease; Tolerance.

Grants and funding

This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (Ecology of Infectious Diseases 1015342) and the University of Georgia Research Foundation. There was no additional external funding received for this study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.