Telomere dysfunction is associated with dark‐induced bleaching in the reef coral Stylophora pistillata

Abstract

Telomere DNA length is a complex trait controlled by both multiple loci and environmental factors. A growing number of studies are focusing on the impact of stress and stress accumulation on telomere length and the link with survival and fitness in ecological contexts. Here, we investigated the telomere changes occurring in a symbiotic coral, Stylophora pistillata, that has experienced continuous darkness over 6 months. This stress condition led to the loss of its symbionts in a similar manner to that observed during large‐scale bleaching events due to climate changes and anthropogenic activities, threatening reef ecosystems worldwide. We found that continuous darkness was associated with telomere length shortening. This result, together with a phylogenetic analysis of the telomere coral proteins and a transcriptome survey of the continuous darkness condition, paves the way for future studies on the role of telomeres in the coral stress response and the importance of environmentally induced telomere shortening in endangered coral species.

The non-telomeric evolutionary trajectory of TRF2 in zebrafish reveals its specific roles in neurodevelopment and aging

“…TRF1 and TRF2 originated from a common TRF ancestor and duplicated during genomic replication at the root of the chordate lineage circa 500 million years ago ( 28 , 39 , 40 ). TRF proteins with demonstrated telomere specific function are quite widespread among eukaryotes such as Taz1 in the fission yeast or tbTRF in Trypanosoma brucei ( 41 ).…”

Linking telomere dynamics to evolution, life history and environmental change: perspectives, predictions and problems

“…They found that, in declining populations, lizards showed reduced telomere length at all stages, and young lizards in threatened populations inherited already short telomeres. In corals, experimentally induced loss of symbionts is associated with increased telomere loss (Rouan et al 2022 ), as is temperature variation (Rouan et al 2023 ), indicating that comparisons of telomere length are likely to provide useful indicators of coral reef health. Friesen et al ( 2022 ) recently suggested using indices of thermal sensitivity of ectotherms based on thermal performance curves to aid the study of of this type of stress on ectotherm telomeres.…”

Integrating telomere biology into the ecology and evolution of natural populations: Progress and prospects

“…Friesen et al (2021) suggest that developing thermal performance curves for the processes affecting telomere dynamics could assist in monitoring climate impacts, highlighting the pressing need for more experimental work in this area to isolate the causes of environmentally induced changes in telomere dynamics. Rouan et al (2021) present such an experimental study on the coral, Stylophora pistillata , in which bleaching, the devastating loss of symbionts that can results from climate change, was induced by continuous darkness. This resulted in increased telomere loss.…”