RNAseq of deep-sea corals exposed to anthropogenic pollutants

To investigate the impacts of anthropogenic pollutants and their synergistic effects on corals, we analyzed the transcriptional responses of the deep-sea octocorals Callogorgia delta and Paramuricea type B3 following 12 hours of exposure to oil, dispersant, and mixtures of oil and dispersant (to represent dispersed oil). Corals were exposed to treatments prepared according to the protocols described in DeLeo et al. (2016)- either (1) heterogenous bulk oil, dispersant and oil-dispersant mixtures containing both dissolved and undissolved chemical components, hereafter referred to as the Bulk-exposure series, or (2) using only the dissolved or water-accommodated oil (and dispersant) fractions (WAF), referred to as the WAF-exposure series. For the Bulk-exposure series this corresponds to the High concentration of oil and dispersant (25 ppm) described by DeLeo et al. (2016), and for the WAF-exposure series this corresponds to the Low concentration of oil (50 uM) and dispersant (35.3 mg/L). After the 12 hr exposures, fragments were fixed in RNAlater to preserve changes in gene expression, for RNA sequencing (single-end reads, 100 bp) and expression comparisons to control fragments . Colonies were also preserved in situ on the sea floor for paired-end RNA sequencing (150 bp) to generate reference transcriptomes for each species.