[M-IS22] Interactions of Geosphere-Hydrosphere-Biosphere and Deep-sea Methane Environments

[MIS22-08] Single-cell RNA-seq revealed distinct metabolic “micro-niches” and close microbe-host interaction in deep-sea chemosynthetic tubeworm

★Invited Papers

*Pei-Yuan Qian^1,2, Hao Wang^1,3, Hongxiu Xiao^2,1, Yi Lan^1,2, Huan Zhang³, Guoyong Yan^1,2, Yi Yang², Zhaoshan Zhong^3,2,1, Minxiao Wang³, Angela Wu^2,1, Chaolun Li³ (1.Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Guangzhou), 2.The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 3.Institute of Oceanography, Chinese Academy of Science, Qingdao)

Keywords:gutless siboglinid tubeworms, symbiosis, deep-sea cold seeps, micro-niches

Gutless vestimentiferan tubeworms (Siboglinidae, Polychaeta) that thrive in deep-sea chemosynthetic environments rely on sulfide-oxidizing endosymbionts to meet their metabolic needs. These tubeworms have a specialised organ – trophosome that houses this remarkably productive animal-microbe symbiotic system. It is very challenging to elucidate the detailed molecular mechanisms of interaction between the tubeworms and their endosymbionts, due to the complexity of the trophosome tissue and symbiont subpopulations. Here, we developed new approaches for deep-sea animal in situ single-cell fixation first and conducted single-cell RNA-seq to obtain the transcriptomes of individual cells in the trophosomes of a cold-seep tubeworm Paraescarpia echinospica. Analysis of single-cell data and the molecular characterisation of key genes from both the worm and symbiont uncovered two very distinct metabolic “micro-niches” in the host trophosome, which provides new insights into the physiology, host-symbiont interactions, and environmental adaptations in deep-sea siboglinid tubeworms.


This work will be presented by Peiyuan Qian