Screening of abiotic stress responsive genes in a soft coral Scleronephthya gracillimum

Abstract

The coral reefs, including soft coral communities, are known to have critical importance for the marine ecosystem but are in serious decline mainly due to the global warming and human activities. Both of physical and chemical stresses could be act as main restriction factors for the coral species distribution. Thus understanding the gene expression dynamics, which affected by such environmental stresses, could reflect the present condition of a coral community and let us forecast the fate of a community against to the drastic environmental changes. In this study, the potential thermal and chemical stress responsive genes from a soft coral Scleronephthya gracillimum were identified by construction of standard and stress-exposed-paired subtractive cDNA library and differential display PCR. The isolated and identified differentially expressed genes have a great potential to identify environmental stressors in global environmental changes and could act as molecular biomarkers for biological responses against environmental changes. Finally, it may open a new paradigm on soft coral health assessment.