Collaborative Research: RUI: Pressure Adaptation, Stress, and Convergent Evolution in Fishes across Habitat Depth

Suny College At Geneseo, Geneseo NY

Investigators

Abstract

High pressures are one of the most recognizable features of the largest habitat on Earth, the deep oceans. Pressures in the deep sea reach up to 1100 times atmospheric pressure, influencing life across scales, from genetic code to whole ecosystems. This research will use cross-disciplinary techniques in genomics, chemistry, biophysics, and physiology to understand how fishes are adapted high pressures. By comparing the genetic code and protein structures of fishes that live from surface waters to the ocean’s deepest trenches, the researchers aim to determine how high pressures have shaped evolution into deep-sea habitats. The project will also investigate how shallow-living fishes that are seeking colder habitats in deeper waters due to increasing temperatures with climate change may respond to increased pressures, informing management and conservation. These data will provide insight into the ways that pressure and temperature interact to govern biological processes, a fundamental question in biology. Research activities will directly involve undergraduate and graduate students and a postdoctoral fellow, providing valuable training, mentorship, and transformative opportunities for early career scientists across identity groups. The project will communicate deep-sea biology across broad audiences through the development of educational resources for middle, high school, and undergraduate students and a workshop following the research expedition, increasing appreciation for, and understanding of deep-sea habitats. Deep-sea ecosystems are characterized by the physiologically challenging environmental conditions of high pressures, cold temperatures, limited nutrient availability, and absence of sunlight. Despite the potential of hydrostatic pressure to impact nearly all of life’s processes, this key environmental variable is often overlooked. To understand evolution and adaptation in deep-sea fishes and to investigate the effects of pressure on shallow-living organisms moving into deeper waters due to increasing sea surface temperatures, this research addresses three interdisciplinary objectives using integrative techniques. First, genetic data from 100 species of perciform fishes from habitat depths 0–8,000 m will be used to characterize convergent and divergent patterns of genome evolution on a site, gene, and pathway level. Second, biomolecules involved in metabolism, cell structure and movement, and stress responses will be expressed and their structural changes across a full temperature-pressure regime will be measured using high pressure small-angle X-ray scattering, comparing shallow- and deep-adapted perciform taxa. Finally, the PIs will establish a new system to use the zebrafish embryo as a genetically tractable model organism to measure transcriptional responses to changing bathymetric conditions, examine the interacting effects of temperature and pressure on physiological stress responses, and to experimentally test pressure adaptation hypotheses, such as the ability of thermal acclimation to facilitate pressure tolerance through overlapping molecular stress responses, in vivo. Together, these results stand to inform understanding of evolution into deep-sea habitats, biochemical mechanisms of pressure adaptation, and marine organisms’ responses to bathymetric range shifts during climate change. This award was co-funded by the Physiological Mechanisms and Biomechanics Program in BIO/IOS and Evolutionary Processes in BIO/DEB. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.