The Global Phosphorylation Landscape of Acute Heat Stress in Reef-Building Corals
- 1University of California, Los Angeles
Abstract
Warming oceans disrupt the coral-algal symbiosis that sustains reefs, yet the signaling mechanisms initiating bleaching remain poorly understood. Integrating global phosphoproteomics across three reef-building corals with protein structure modeling revealed conservation between coral and human kinases, enabling inference of coral kinase activities and uncovering a shared signaling program induced by acute heat stress. Heat rapidly activated ERK, JNK, and p38 MAP kinases, suppressed cell cycle signaling, and remodeled pathways controlling chromatin, RNA processing, and metabolism. Most strikingly, thermal stress rewired immune receptor signaling networks associated with non-self recognition, suggesting that heat shifts the coral host from tolerance to immune recognition of its algal symbionts. These findings define conserved signaling mechanisms that precede bleaching, revealing actionable molecular targets for enhancing coral resilience.
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BibTeX
@misc{ashley2026global,
title = {{The Global Phosphorylation Landscape of Acute Heat Stress in Reef-Building Corals}},
author = {I. A. Ashley and G. Tortorelli and J. Nguyen and K. Alba and E. Majerova and D. Winters and S. Carthen and T. Perez and S. L. Rosset and C. Drury and M. Bouhaddou},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.29.762943},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.29.762943v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - The Global Phosphorylation Landscape of Acute Heat Stress in Reef-Building Corals
AU - I. A. Ashley
AU - G. Tortorelli
AU - J. Nguyen
AU - K. Alba
AU - E. Majerova
AU - D. Winters
AU - S. Carthen
AU - T. Perez
AU - S. L. Rosset
AU - C. Drury
AU - M. Bouhaddou
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/29
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.29.762943
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.29.762943v1
AB - Warming oceans disrupt the coral-algal symbiosis that sustains reefs, yet the signaling mechanisms initiating bleaching remain poorly understood. Integrating global phosphoproteomics across three reef-building corals with protein structure modeling revealed conservation between coral and human kinases, enabling inference of coral kinase activities and uncovering a shared signaling program induced by acute heat stress. Heat rapidly activated ERK, JNK, and p38 MAP kinases, suppressed cell cycle signaling, and remodeled pathways controlling chromatin, RNA processing, and metabolism. Most strikingly, thermal stress rewired immune receptor signaling networks associated with non-self recognition, suggesting that heat shifts the coral host from tolerance to immune recognition of its algal symbionts. These findings define conserved signaling mechanisms that precede bleaching, revealing actionable molecular targets for enhancing coral resilience.
ER -