Molecular processes of transgenerational acclimation to a warming ocean

Can multi-generational exposure to ocean warming and acidification lead to the adaptation of life-history and physiology in a marine metazoan?

“…Numerous factors play a role in determining the response of the ETS to temperature, including the distribution of redox centers within the complex, the efficiency of substrate docking and the thermal sensitivity of metabolic pathways upstream of the ETS (Blier et al, 2014). We cannot pinpoint the exact pathway modified by the ocean warming scenario in this study, but it is likely that such modifications in metabolic organization arise from the differential up-regulation of genes coding for mitochondrial biosynthesis, as has been described in the damselfish Acanthochromis polyacanthus (Veilleux et al, 2015) and G. aculeatus (Shama et al, 2016) following multi-generational exposure to ocean warming. It is interesting to note that these changes initially persist following transplantation back to control conditions but only for a single generation (F5), suggesting that they occur via phenotypic plasticity.…”

“…However, there have been no multi-driver, multigenerational studies in marine organisms, so it is unclear whether a similar pattern will emerge when ocean warming and acidification are combined, and this is one avenue of research that must be pursued. Single-driver experiments reveal that benefits are likely to be retained over multiple generations via alterations in parental resource partitioning (Marshall and Uller, 2007;Lane et al, 2015) and somatic factors such as antibiotics, antioxidants, hormones and mitochondria (Hamdoun and Epel, 2007;De Wit et al, 2016;Shama et al, 2016), although epigenetic effects on protein conformation, DNA methylation and chromatin marks may also play a role (Jablonka and Raz, 2009;Bonduriansky et al, 2012;Veilleux et al, 2015;Munday et al, 2017;Putnam et al, 2016).…”

Rapid adaptive responses to climate change in corals

“…Recent developments in omics technologies have enabled greater insight into the molecular pathways associated with plastic phenotypic responses and, in some cases, identified key genes whose altered expression may contribute to buffering against adverse environmental conditions within a generation 22,23 and across multiple generations 24,25 . Epigenetics, a term originally coined by Waddington in 1940, was intended to explain the phenomenon of cellular differentiation in multicellular organisms from a single genome 26 .…”

Gathering by the Red Sea highlights links between environment and epigenetics

“…His work showed that linker histones generally inhibit modifications of different H3 sites and reduce Adaptation through epigenetic control extends beyond plants, as shown by Timothy Ravasi and Celia Schunter (KAUST), who shared their research on transgenerational adaptation of tropical fish to rapid anthropogenic changes in ocean temperature and CO 2 levels. Their use of non-model organism and integrated approaches (including de novo genomes, transcriptomes, proteomes and DNA methylomes) yielded transgenerational molecular signatures, which allowed them to propose possible epigenetic mechanisms for switching genetic networks that control metabolism and behavior during transgenerational adaptation to climate change 5,6 .…”