Sampling and experimental metadata related to 'Candidatus' Aquarickettsia rohweri transcriptome data from host Acropora cervicornis colonies collected at Looe Key, Lower Florida Keys from Apr to Jun of 2019

Abstract

This dataset contains sampling and experimental metadata related to 'Candidatus' Aquarickettsia rohweri transcriptome sequences housed at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Sequence Read Archive (SRA) under BioProject PRJNA1048415. All host colonies (Acropora cervicornis genotype ML-50) were collected from the same location, the Mote Marine Laboratory in situ coral nursery in Looe Key, Lower Florida Keys between April and June of 2019.

The Rickettsiales-like bacterial parasite, 'Candidatus' Aquarickettsia rohweri (NCBI:txid2602574) is a ubiquitous coral symbiont that is strongly linked to coral disease susceptibility in staghorn coral, and is undergoing positive selection across the Caribbean. Although ‘Ca.’ A. rohweri is a putative parasite, little is known about the activity of this bacterium in coral tissue. We performed a transcriptomic analyses of ‘Ca.’ A. rohweri populations during a 6-week nutrient exposure experiment. ‘Ca.’ A. rohweri energy scavenging genes and those potentially involved during habitat transition are significantly upregulated during enrichment. Specifically, transcripts involved in signaling, virulence, two-component systems, and nutrient import genes are elevated under higher nutrients. These data support the predicted role of ‘Ca.’ A. rohweri as a highly active nutrient-responsive A. cervicornis parasite and provide a glimpse at the mechanism of induced disease susceptibility while implicating nutrient exposure in its horizontal transmission.

For a complete list of measurements, refer to the full dataset description in the supplemental file 'Dataset_description.pdf'. The most current version of this dataset is available at: https://www.bco-dmo.org/dataset/928636