Figure 1.
Stylophora pistillata (Esper, 1797) is a member of the “robust” lineage of stony corals.
(A) A colony of S. pistillata growing in the Gulf of Eilat, Israel. (B) A colony in the aquarium at the Centre Scientifique de Monaco. (C) Magnification of a polyp in which the symbiotic dinoflagellates (Symbiodinium sp.) can be observed. (Credits-A: D. Zoccola; B &C: E. Tambutté/CSM).
Figure 2.
Flow chart of the experimental procedure.
RNA was extracted from adult colonies of Stylophora pistillata from field and laboratory maintained colonies. The coral colonies were held under the presented treatments. LL – constant illumination; LD –12∶12 h light/dark; DD – constant dark.
Figure 3.
Venn diagram of transcript homologues from the stony coral Stylophora pistillata across taxonomic groups, including diploblasts (A. digitifera, H. magnipapillata, N. vectensis,); protostomes (D. Melanogaster and C. elegans); and deuterostomes (S. Purpuratus, C. intestinalis and H. sapiens).
Table 1.
The number of contigs with at least one valid hit obtained using blastX to search the S. pistillata EST library against various proteome libraries.
Figure 4.
Venn diagram of transcript homologues from Stylophora pistillata across cnidarians (Scleractinia, Actiniaria, and Hydrozoa).
The positions of the different groups are indicated in the left tree, obtained from Technau and Steele [63].
Table 2.
The number of contigs with at least one valid hit obtained from a blastN search using the EST library from S. pistillata as a query against various cnidarian EST libraries.
Figure 5.
Functional characterization of S. pistillata transcripts.
A total of 8,667 transcripts were classified into KOG/COG categories, giving rise to a total of 9,769 class assignments (some COGs belong to more than one class). The distribution among the functional classes is given in the central pie chart, with each super category slice broken down into separate pie charts in the corners (poorly characterized and uncharacterized functional categories [R and S] are combined with the uncharacterized category [X] in a separate pie chart at the top left corner). The overall class distribution follows those of other metazoan genomes, with the most abundant functions being signal transduction, protein turnover, translation and transcription.
Figure 6.
Human Wnt (A) and BMP (B) signaling pathways from KEGG pathways [45].
Sequences found in the Stylophora pistillata EST library based on sequence similarity with equivalent human homologues are labeled with a yellow star.
Figure 7.
Galaxin and Galaxin-like sequences from different species: Spi-Stylophora pistillata, Adi-Acropora digitifera, Ami-Acropora millepora, Gfa- Galaxea fascicularis were used for phylogenetic analysis. The tree was constructed using Mrbayes program [46].