물리화학적 스트레스 관련 유전자와 해양서식지 관리 및 보전

Abstract

The coral reefs, including soft coral communities, are known to have critical importance for marine biodiversity. However the coral communities are in serious decline mainly due to the phenomena, which caused by human activities, such as global warming and marine pollution. These kinds 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 sudden environmental changes. The potential thermal and chemical stress responsive genes from a soft coral Scleronephthya gracillimum were identified by construction of standard and stress treated-paired subtractive cDNA library. The soft coral colonies were exposed to higher temperature (28°C) or exposed benzo[a]pyrene (1 μM) for 24 hr under the controlled condition. Three groups, including untreated standard at 22°C, were subjected to synthesize cDNAs. The cDNA libraries of differentially expressed transcripts were generated by subtraction of normal cDNA from the two kinds of stresses treated cDNA populations. During the first stage of the analysis, we have identified 6 and 3 authentic candidates of differentially expressed genes to the thermal stress and benzo[a]pyrene exposure, respectively. The genes identified in this study have potential usefulness as biomarkers for monitoring the degree of environmental stresses on a soft coral species.