Transcriptome analyses of immune system behaviors in the scleractinian coral Acropora digitifera

Elevated temperatures directly or indirectly alter the distribution of coral-pathogen interactions and thereby exacerbate infectious coral diseases. The pathogenic bacterium Vibrio coralliilyticus is well-known as a causative agent of infectious coral disease. Rising sea surface temperature promotes the infection of corals by this bacterium, which causes several coral pathologies, such as bacterial bleaching, tissue lysis, and white syndrome. The goals of this project are to reveal the effects of thermal stress on coral immunity against V. coralliilyticus infection. We performed transcriptomic analysis of aposymbiotic primary polyps of Acropora digitifera exposed to V. coralliilyticus under conditions of thermal stress at early time points. After gradual heat acclimatization, RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) of juvenile polyps before and after experimental infection with V. coralliilyticus was performed on the Illumina Hiseq4000 platform.