Abstract
Corals, like other cnidarians, are venomous animals that rely on stinging cells (nematocytes) and their toxins to catch prey and defend themselves against predators. However, little is known about the chemical arsenal employed by stony corals, despite their ecological importance. Here, we show large differences in the density of nematocysts and whole-body hemolytic activity between different species of reef-building corals. In the branched coral Stylophora pistillata, the tips of the branches exhibited a greater hemolytic activity than the bases. Hemolytic activity and nematocyst density were significantly lower in Stylophora that were maintained for close to a year in captivity compared to corals collected from the wild. A cysteine-containing actinoporin was identified in Stylophora following partial purification and tandem mass spectrometry. This toxin, named Δ-Pocilopotoxin-Spi1 (Δ-PCTX-Spi1) is the first hemolytic toxin to be partially isolated and characterized in true reef-building corals. Loss of hemolytic activity during chromatography suggests that this actinoporin is only one of potentially several hemolytic molecules. These results suggest that the capacity to employ offensive and defensive chemicals by corals is a dynamic trait within and between coral species, and provide a first step towards identifying the molecular components of the coral chemical armament.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 251 |
Journal | Scientific Reports |
Volume | 8 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1 Dec 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank D. Aharonovich for assistance with the bioinformatics, D. Morgenstern for help with the proteomic analysis and T. Mass for the use of the photographs in Figure. 1. We thank the Inter-university Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat for logistic and financial support to HBA. We also thank the many students of the course on “Marine Venoms and Defense Systems”, held at the IUI, whose course lab-work laid the foundations for this study. This work was supported by grant 1994/13 from the Israel Science Foundation to DS
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 The Author(s).
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General