Interactions between the dinoflagellate endosymbiont Symbiodinium and its cnidarian hosts (e.g., corals, sea anemones) are the foundation of coral-reef ecosystems. Carbon flow between the partners is a hallmark of this mutualism, but the mechanisms governing this flow and its impact on symbiosis remain poorly understood. We showed previously that although Symbiodinium strain SSB01 can grow photoautotrophically, it can grow mixotrophically or heterotrophically when supplied with glucose, a metabolite normally transferred from the alga to its host. Here we show that glucose supplementation of SSB01 cultures causes a loss of pigmentation and photosynthetic activity, disorganization of thylakoid membranes, accumulation of lipid bodies, and alterations of cell-surface morphology. We used global transcriptome analyses to determine if these physiological changes were correlated with changes in gene expression. Glucose-supplemented cells exhibited a marked reduction in levels of plastid transcripts encoding photosynthetic proteins, although most nuclear-encoded transcripts (including those for proteins involved in lipid synthesis and formation of the extracellular matrix) exhibited little change in their abundances. However, the altered carbon metabolism in glucose-supplemented cells was correlated with modest alterations (~2X) in the levels of some nuclear-encoded transcripts for sugar transporters. Finally, glucose-bleached SSB01 cells appeared unable to efficiently populate anemone larvae. Together, these results suggest links between energy metabolism and cellular physiology, morphology, and symbiotic interactions. However, the results also show that in contrast to many other organisms, Symbiodinium can undergo dramatic physiological changes that are not reflected by major changes in the abundances of nuclear-encoded transcripts and thus presumably reflect post-transcriptional regulatory processes.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 10. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 08 October 2018.
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Altmetric has tracked 28,829,220 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 85th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 13,473 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 7.1. This one has done well, scoring higher than 80% of its peers.
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