1. Ecology
  2. Microbiology and Infectious Disease

A diverse host thrombospondin-type-1 repeat protein repertoire promotes symbiont colonization during establishment of cnidarian-dinoflagellate symbiosis

  1. Emilie-Fleur Neubauer
  2. Angela Z Poole
  3. Philipp Neubauer
  4. Olivier Detournay
  5. Kenneth Tan
  6. Simon K Davy  Is a corresponding author
  7. Virginia M Weis  Is a corresponding author
  1. Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
  2. Western Oregon University, United States
  3. Dragonfly Data Science, New Zealand
  4. Planktovie sas, France
  5. Oregon State University, United States
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.24494
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Cite this article
  1. Emilie-Fleur Neubauer
  2. Angela Z Poole
  3. Philipp Neubauer
  4. Olivier Detournay
  5. Kenneth Tan
  6. Simon K Davy
  7. Virginia M Weis
(2017)
A diverse host thrombospondin-type-1 repeat protein repertoire promotes symbiont colonization during establishment of cnidarian-dinoflagellate symbiosis
eLife 6:e24494.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.24494
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Abstract

The mutualistic endosymbiosis between cnidarians and dinoflagellates is mediated by complex inter-partner signaling events, where the host cnidarian innate immune system plays a crucial role in recognition and regulation of symbionts. To date, little is known about the diversity of thrombospondin-type-1 repeat (TSR) domain proteins in basal metazoans and or their potential role in regulation of cnidarian-dinoflagellate mutualisms. We reveal a large and diverse repertoire of TSR proteins in seven anthozoan species, and show that in the model sea anemone Aiptasia pallida the TSR domain promotes colonization of the host by the symbiotic dinoflagellate Symbiodinium minutum. Blocking TSR domains led to decreased colonization success, while adding exogenous TSRs resulted in a 'super colonization'. Furthermore, gene expression of TSR proteins was highest at early time-points during symbiosis establishment. Our work characterizes the diversity of cnidarian TSR proteins and provides evidence that these proteins play an important role in the establishment of cnidarian-dinoflagellate symbiosis.

Data availability

The following previously published data sets were used
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    2. Crowder CM
    3. Poole AZ
    4. Weis VM
    5. Meyer E
    (2015) Data from: De novo assembly and characterization of four anthozoan (phylum Cnidaria) transcriptomes
    Available at Dryad Digital Repository under a CC0 Public Domain Dedication. This work used the following resource built from this data: http://people.oregonstate.edu/~meyere/data.htm.
    http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.3f08f
    1. Lehnert EM
    2. Burriesci MS
    3. Pringle JR
    (2012) Developing the anemone Aiptasia as a tractable model for cnidarian-dinoflagellate symbiosis: the transcriptome of aposymbiotic A. pallida
    Publicly available at the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (accession no. SRR696721). This work used the following resource built from this data: http://pringlelab.stanford.edu/projects.html.
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/SRR696721
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    15. Voolstra CR
    (2015) The genome of Aiptasia, a sea anemone model for coral symbiosis
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    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA261862
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    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA314803
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    12. Miller DJ
    13. Satoh N
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    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJDA67425
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    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA74409

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Emilie-Fleur Neubauer

    School of Biological Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  2. Angela Z Poole

    Department of Biology, Western Oregon University, Monmouth, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  3. Philipp Neubauer

    Dragonfly Data Science, Wellington, New Zealand
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-4150-848X

  4. Olivier Detournay

    Planktovie sas, Allauch, France
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  5. Kenneth Tan

    Department of Integrative Biology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  6. Simon K Davy

    School of Biological Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
    For correspondence
    Simon.Davy@vuw.ac.nz
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  7. Virginia M Weis

    Department of Integrative Biology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, United States
    For correspondence
    weisv@oregonstate.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-1826-2848

Funding

National Science Foundation (IOB0919073)

  • Virginia M Weis

Victoria University of Wellington

  • Emilie-Fleur Neubauer

Oregon State University

  • Kenneth Tan

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Copyright

© 2017, Neubauer et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Emilie-Fleur Neubauer
  2. Angela Z Poole
  3. Philipp Neubauer
  4. Olivier Detournay
  5. Kenneth Tan
  6. Simon K Davy
  7. Virginia M Weis
(2017)
A diverse host thrombospondin-type-1 repeat protein repertoire promotes symbiont colonization during establishment of cnidarian-dinoflagellate symbiosis
eLife 6:e24494.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.24494

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.24494

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