technical paper
Does rapid adaptation to ocean warming and acidification leave behind a cellular metabolomic and lipidomic signature in a marine copepod?
keywords:
omics profiles
multigenerational
multiple stressors
The ability of marine species to rapidly adapt to multiple environmental changes is considered to be a fundamental mechanism in enabling them to survive global changes. Therefore, considerable efforts have been undertaken to test the evolutionary potential of multiple species when exposed to global change stressors. However, they mostly focused on single stressors exposure. As stressors can interact in non-linear manners, it is essential to better understand the mechanisms and the molecular signature of this adaptation in a multistressor context. Whilst genetic advances have greatly contributed to pinpointing some of the genetic mechanisms involved, a functional disconnect between genes and fitness remains: little is known about the actual changes occurring at the cellular level outside the nucleus following rapid adaptation. Therefore, building on the previous multigenerational selection experiment that looked at the fitness-related traits and genomic responses to ocean warming (OW) and ocean acidification (OA) in the marine copepod Acartia tonsa, we compared the metabolomics and lipidomics profiles of the F>100 lineages following their respective adaptation to OW and OA in isolation and in combination (OWA). Four pools of 200 individuals per lineage were flash frozen and metabolites and lipids were extracted and injected into a high-performance LC-MS/MS to obtain the concentration of 65 target metabolites involved in the energy pathways and whole lipidome profiles. Capacity and limitation for multiomics rewiring of A. tonsa are discussed within an adaptive context and in light of fitness-related life-history trait responses and genomic evidence.