Thermal adaptation in closely related virbios

Here, we investigate the genetic mechanisms that underlie thermal specialization of closely-related vibrios isolated from coastal water at the Beaufort Inlet (Beaufort, NC, USA). This location experiences large seasonal temperature fluctuations (annual range of ~20°C), and a clear seasonal shift in vibrio diversity has been observed (Yung et al. 2015). This previous study suggested that the mechanisms of thermal adaptation apparently differ based on evolutionary timescale: shifts in the temperature of maximal growth occur between deeply branching clades but the shape of the thermal performance curve changes on shorter time scales (Yung et al. 2015). The observed thermal specialization in vibrio populations over relatively short evolutionary time scales indicates that few genes or cellular processes may contribute to the differences in thermal performance between populations. In order to understand the molecular mechanisms that underlie adaptation to local thermal regimes in environmental vibrio populations, we employ genomic and transcriptomic approaches to examine transcriptomic changes that occur within strains grown at their thermal optima and under heat and cold stress. Moreover, we compare two closely-related strains with different laboratory thermal preferences to identify in situ evolutionary responses to different thermal environments in genome content and alleles as well as gene expression. Overall design: We sequenced the transcriptomes of two environmental strains (Vibrio sp. PID17_43 and Vibrio sp. PID23_8) grown under three temperature conditions: heat stress, temperature of optimal growth and cold stress. The draft genome assemblies were deposited in the NCBI whole genome shotgun archive under project ID PRJNA292554, However, the WGS submission has not been released yet.