Heat stress analysis suggests a genetic basis for tolerance in Macrocystis pyrifera across developmental stages.

Abstract

Kelps are vital for marine ecosystems, yet the genetic diversity underlying their capacity to adapt to climate change remains unknown. In this study, we focused on the kelp Macrocystis pyrifera a species critical to coastal habitats. We developed a protocol to evaluate heat stress response in 204 Macrocystis pyrifera genotypes subjected to heat stress treatments ranging from 21 °C to 27 °C. Here we show that haploid gametophytes exhibiting a heat-stress tolerant (HST) phenotype also produced greater biomass as genetically similar diploid sporophytes in a warm-water ocean farm. HST was measured as chlorophyll autofluorescence per genotype, presented here as fluorescent intensity values. This correlation suggests a predictive relationship between the growth performance of the early microscopic gametophyte stage HST and the later macroscopic sporophyte stage, indicating the potential for selecting resilient kelp strains under warmer ocean temperatures. However, HST kelps showed reduced genetic variation, underscoring the importance of integrating heat tolerance genes into a broader genetic pool to maintain the adaptability of kelp populations in the face of climate change.

Plant phenotyping relevance

熱ストレス耐性という植物状態をクロロフィル自家蛍光で定量するプロトコルを開発しており、表現型取得法が研究の中心的要素として明示されている。

Code and data availability

The authors publicly deposited both the analysis scripts and the numerical source data (including raw fluorescence intensity values underlying the heat-stress phenotyping) in a Zenodo repository, with explicit availability statements and URLs in the Data availability and Code availability sections.