Ocean acidification induces changes in circadian alternative splicing profiles in a coral reef fish
Suresh, Sneha, Jarrold, Michael, Ravasi, Timothy, Munday, Philip L., and Schunter, Celia (2025) Ocean acidification induces changes in circadian alternative splicing profiles in a coral reef fish. Scientific Reports, 15 (1). 22107.
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Abstract
Alternative splicing is a fundamental mechanism of gene expression regulation that increases mRNA diversity and can be partially regulated by the circadian clock. Time-dependent production of transcript isoforms from the same gene facilitates coordination of biological processes with the time of day and is a crucial mechanism enabling organisms to cope with environmental changes. In this study, we determined the impact of future ocean acidification conditions on circadian splicing patterns in the brain of fish, while accounting for diel CO<inf>2</inf> fluctuations that naturally occur on coral reefs. The temporal splicing pattern observed across a 24-hour period in fish from the control group was largely absent in those exposed to either stable or fluctuating elevated CO<inf>2</inf> conditions. Splicing patterns were influenced not only by an overall increase in CO<inf>2</inf> concentration but also by its stability, with 6am and 6pm emerging as key timepoints when the majority of aberrant splicing events were identified. We found that fish in fluctuating CO<inf>2</inf> conditions exhibited increased temporal plasticity in splicing events compared to fish in stable CO<inf>2</inf> conditions. This was especially notable for genes associated with neural functioning. Our findings suggest that natural temporal splicing patterns in fish brains are disrupted by elevated CO<inf>2</inf> exposure, with CO<inf>2</inf> stability also influencing molecular responses. The increased plasticity in temporal splicing activity observed in fish in fluctuating CO<inf>2</inf> environments may provide greater flexibility in biological responses to external pH changes, potentially enabling them to better cope with future ocean acidification conditions.
| Item ID: | 87724 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 2045-2322 |
| Keywords: | Alternative splicing, Circadian rhythm, Coral reef, Diel CO2 fluctuations, Spiny chromis damselfish, Transcriptomics |
| Copyright Information: | © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. |
| Date Deposited: | 30 Jan 2026 05:39 |
| FoR Codes: | 31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3103 Ecology > 310305 Marine and estuarine ecology (incl. marine ichthyology) @ 100% |
| SEO Codes: | 18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1805 Marine systems and management > 180505 Measurement and assessment of marine water quality and condition @ 100% |
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