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Coupling Metabolite Flux to Transcriptomics: Insights Into the Molecular Mechanisms Underlying Primary Productivity by the Hydrothermal Vent Tubeworm Ridgeia piscesae

¹ University of Connecticut, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, 91 North Eagleville Road, Unit 3125, Storrs, Connecticut 06269-3125
² Harvard University, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, 16 Divinity Avenue, Room 3085, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138-2020

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: pgirguis{at}oeb.harvard.edu

Deep-sea hydrothermal vents host highly productive ecosystems. Many of these communities are dominated by vestimentiferan tubeworms that house endosymbiotic chemoautotrophic bacteria that provide the hosts with their primary nutritional needs. Rates of carbon fixation by these symbioses are also among the highest recorded. Despite the breadth of physiological and biochemical research on these associations, the underlying molecular mechanisms that regulate host and symbiont metabolite flux and carbon fixation are largely unknown. Here we present metabolite flux and transcriptomics data from shipboard high-pressure respirometry experiments in which we maintained Ridgeia piscesae tubeworms at conditions comparable to those in situ. Host trophosome was used for cDNA library construction and sequencing. Of the 19,132 clones sequenced, 10,684 represented unique expressed sequence tags (ESTs). The highest proportions of genes are involved with translation, ribosomal structure and biogenesis, cellular processing, and signal transduction. There was moderate representation of genes involved in metabolite exchange and acid-base regulation. These data represent the first concomitant surveys of metabolite flux rates and gene expression for a chemoautotrophic symbiosis during net autotrophy, and they suggest that—in the case of Ridgeia piscesae—host-symbiont interactions such as cell cycle regulation may play a significant role in maintaining physiological poise during high productivity.

Abbreviations: EST, expressed sequence tag • HPRS, high-pressure respirometry system

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