Transcriptome-wide Changes in Coral Gene Expression at Noon and Midnight Under Field Conditions

Reef-building corals experience high daily variation in their environment, food availability, and physiological activities such as calcification and photosynthesis by endosymbionts. On Ofu Island, American Samoa, we investigated day-night differences in gene expression under field conditions of changing pH, temperature, light, and oxygen. Using RNASeq techniques, we compared two replicate transcriptomes from a single coral colony of Acropora hyacinthus over six noons and five midnights. We identified 344 contigs with significant expression differences across 16,800 contigs in the transcriptome, most with small fold-changes. However, there were 21 contigs with fold-changes ranging from 10 to 141. The largest changes were in a set of transcription factors strongly associated with day-night gene regulation in other animals, including cryptochromes, thyrotroph embryonic factor, and D site-binding protein. We also found large daytime increases in a set of genes involved in glucose transport and glycogen storage. We found small expression differences in genes associated with aerobic ATP production and hypoxia response, along with slightly higher expression of most calcification genes at noon. Although >40-fold-changes in expression occur in important transcription factors, downstream gene regulation seems very stable in corals from day to night compared to other animals studied.