海绵在底栖生态系统中扮演着重要角色，除了为其他物种提供庇护和食物之外，它们还通过调节水中的氮和铵离子水平以及生物富集重金属等方式帮助维持水质。然而，这个系统特别敏感于突如其来的环境变化，包括如油污泄漏这样的灾难性污染事件。目前，墨西哥湾有数百个石油平台正积极开采石油和天然气。为了测试底栖生态系统对油污泄漏的脆弱性，我们利用加勒比海珊瑚礁海绵Cinachyrella alloclada作为一种新的实验指标。我们将生物暴露于原油和油散剂中，时间长达24小时，并测量了基因表达的变化。我们的研究发现，一小时暴露于水中的可容纳的分数（WAF）就足以引起海绵和宿主细菌群体（8052个差异表达转录本）的基因表达大量变化，表现为压力相关、癌症相关和细胞完整性通路的上调。 上调的基因包括热休克蛋白、凋亡、癌基因（Rab/Ras、Src、CMYC）和几种E3泛素连接酶。 官能化WAF（CE-WAF）的24小时暴露对底栖群落产生了最大的影响，导致基因表达的大部分下调（4248个差异表达转录本）。1小时处理的基因失调遵循这种毒性下降趋势：WAF>CE-WAF>散剂，而24小时处理则表现出CE-WAF>散剂>WAF的趋势。因此，本研究支持Cinachyrella alloclada作为研究模型生物和佛罗里达海礁生物指示种的发展，并强调了开发更有效和更安全的清除油污方法在污染灾难事件中的重要性。 版权所有 © 2023 Elsevier B.V.发表。

Marine sponges play important roles in benthic ecosystems. More than providing shelter and food to other species, they help maintain water quality by regulating nitrogen and ammonium levels in the water, and bioaccumulate heavy metals. This system, however, is particularly sensitive to sudden environmental changes including catastrophic pollution event such as oil spills. Hundreds of oil platforms are currently actively extracting oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico. To test the vulnerability of the benthic ecosystems to oil spills, we utilized the Caribbean reef sponge, Cinachyrella alloclada, as a novel experimental indicator. We have exposed organisms to crude oil and oil dispersant for up to 24 h and measured resultant gene expression changes. Our findings indicate that 1-hour exposure to water accommodated fractions (WAF) was enough to elicit massive shifts in gene expression in sponges and host bacterial communities (8052 differentially expressed transcripts) with the up-regulation of stress related pathways, cancer related pathways, and cell integrity pathways. Genes that were upregulated included heat shock proteins, apoptosis, oncogenes (Rab/Ras, Src, CMYC), and several E3 ubiquitin ligases. 24-hour exposure of chemically enhanced WAF (CE-WAF) had the greatest impact to benthic communities, resulting in mostly downregulation of gene expression (4248 differentially expressed transcripts). Gene deregulation from 1-hour treatments follow this decreasing trend of toxicity: WAF > CE-WAF > Dispersant, while the 24-hour treatment showed a shift to CE-WAF > Dispersant > WAF in our experiments. Thus, this study supports the development of Cinachyrella alloclada as a research model organism and bioindicator species for Florida reefs and underscores the importance of developing more efficient and safer ways to remove oil in the event of a spill catastrophe.Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier B.V.