👤 William M McDougall

Gene and protein expression analyses are powerful tools to investigate the responses of cnidarians to stress, providing information on both genetic and functional variation and capturing dynamic shifts in organismal physiology. As the use of high throughput sequencing to understand responses of cnidarians to stressors is still relatively new, standard experimental protocols have not yet been established, which limits the ability to compare studies. We (1) systematically reviewed the literature of cnidarian gene and protein expression studies related to environmental stressors to determine how the laboratory experiments were designed and (2) investigated the consistency in responses of genes commonly used as biomarkers within stress experiments conducted on the five most-studied cnidarian genera. Duration of exposure to the stressor, acclimation period and intensity of stress varied greatly among experiments, and most studies did not sample during acclimation and recovery. Before designing experiments that aim to characterise molecular responses to a specific environmental stress, research efforts need to focus on understanding the plasticity of whole transcriptome responses, as gene expression can vary under different stress intensities and durations of exposure. Additionally, only seven genes that were tested in at least two different genera showed a consistent response under heat stress (CuZn-SOD, c-type lectin, FGFR1, MMP, Zn-MP, NF-κB and SLC26). These genes have the potential to standardise evaluations of temperature stress across experiments on cnidarians, and we suggest exploring their use as general cnidarian biomarkers of temperature stress (cBATS). Show less

The flaviviruses dengue virus (DENV) and Zika virus (ZIKV) are severe health threats with rapidly expanding ranges. To identify the host cell dependencies of DENV and ZIKV, we completed orthologous functional genomic screens using RNAi and CRISPR/Cas9 approaches. The screens recovered the ZIKV entry factor AXL as well as multiple host factors involved in endocytosis (RAB5C and RABGEF), heparin sulfation (NDST1 and EXT1), and transmembrane protein processing and maturation, including the endoplasmic reticulum membrane complex (EMC). We find that both flaviviruses require the EMC for their early stages of infection. Together, these studies generate a high-confidence, systems-wide view of human-flavivirus interactions and provide insights into the role of the EMC in flavivirus replication. Show less