What doesn’t kill them makes them stronger: an association between elongation factor 1-αoverdominance in the sea starPisaster ochraceusand “sea star wasting disease”

Abstract

In recent years, a massive mortality event has killed millions of sea stars, of many different species, along the Pacific coast of North America. This disease event, known as ‘sea star wasting disease’ (SSWD), is linked to viral infection. In one affected sea star (Pisaster ochraceus), previous work had identified that the elongation factor 1-αlocus (EF1A) harbored an intronic insertion allele that is lethal when homozygous yet appears to be maintained at moderate frequency in populations through increased fitness for heterozygotes. The environmental conditions supporting this increased fitness are unknown, but overdominance is often associated with disease. Here, we evaluate populations ofP. ochraceusto identify the relationship between SSWD and EF1A genotype. Our data suggest that there may be significantly decreased occurrence of SSWD in individuals that are heterozygous at this locus. These results suggest further studies are warranted to understand the functional relationship between diversity at EF1A and survival inP. ochraceus.