Modulation of Hsp60 in response to coral brown band disease

The cellular stress response of the scleractinian coral Goniopora columna during the progression of the black band disease

“…Therefore, this indicates that the microbial consortium has generated a strong cellular damage of a similar intensity in the whole diseased colony, within 10 cm from the infection, and that both the cellular compartments analyzed, mitochondria and cytoplasm, were equally affected by the pathogen action. Moreover, on the contrary to what observed in other coral species affected by other diseases (Seveso et al , 2015, the cellular stress and damage appeared not confined in a restricted area close to the infection but widespread in a more extended area. In this context, the up-regulation of all the defense mechanisms could represent a system that attempts to reduce the spreading of the infection throughout the whole colony, limiting the rate of the pathogen progression.…”

“…In the healthy control colonies of G. columna, both the cytosolic Hsp70 and the mitochondrial Hsp60 displayed a low basal level of expression that was always similar and comparable in the different parts of the coral colony (as also observed in another coral species, Acropora muricata, Seveso et al 2015). Similarly, the expression of the cytosolic HO-1, as well as that of the mitochondrial MnSOD, was similar in the different parts of the colonies.…”

“…This damage affecting the metabolic and cellular equilibrium has triggered a cellular stress response by activating the main cellular defense mechanisms. These include, in addition to the Hsp70 and Hsp60, whose expression in pathogen-coral relationship has been recently explored (Seveso et al , 2015Brown et al 2013;Libro et al 2013;Brown and RodriguezLanetty 2015;Fuess et al 2016;Garcia et al 2016), an increased antioxidant response (HO-1 and MnSOD) that is indicative of oxidative stress. To date, cnidarian HO-1 and MnSOD have been investigated especially in relation to environmental abiotic stresses rather than to diseases (Fang et al 1997;Richier et al 2005Richier et al , 2008Downs et al 2006;Lesser 2011).…”

“…Colonies of G. columna (n = 7) affected by BBD were located in the lagoon of Magoodhoo Island (3°04′ 42″ N; 72°57′ 50″ E) in the south east part of Faafu Atoll, Republic of Maldives (for a detailed description of the study site, see Montano et al 2015b andSeveso et al 2015). Here, they were tagged, photographed (Canon G11 with Canon housing), and monitored by snorkeling over a period of approximately 3 years (from the end of 2010 to 2013) to measure the slow disease progression rate as previously reported (Montano et al 2015b).…”

“…In addition, to test whether the expression of the biomarkers could be influenced by the position of coral polyps within the colony and/or by the sampling time, seven entirely healthy large size colonies of G. columna were randomly selected as control within the same study site and at the same depth of the diseased ones. For each of them, coral fragments were collected in both the sampling periods at three different distances from the top of the massive colonies (C1, C2, C3) as previously reported (Seveso et al 2015).…”