Protein 3D structure of benthic Foraminifera (Ammonia dentata), parts of East coast of India: A potential proxy for detecting marine pollution?

Benthic Foraminifera are known to survive and thrive in contaminated marine ecosys-tems where they constitute a lion's share of the benthic biomass. However, the mor-phological adaptations of Foraminifera to the polluted environment remain poorly constrained. We sampled from marine sediments of the Nellore region, East coast of India. The species Ammonia dentate (A.dentata) dominated the Foraminiferal biota, and metatranscriptomics generated were employed to characterize Foraminifera metabolic activity across the marine environmentally geochemically contaminated conditions by developing protein three dimensional (3D) structures. Foraminifera protein encoding transcripts, attributed primarily to those involved in protein synthesis, intracellular protein trafficking, and modification of the cytoskeleton. This shows that many species of microbiota were not only surviving but thriving, under the severe contaminated environments. The microbiota is characterized by amino acids, fermentation of sugars, fumarate reduction, proteins, nitrate reduction. In addition, the generated data show that under polluted situation Foraminifera may use the creatine phosphate as an Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) store, allowing reserves of high-energy phosphate pool to be maintained for sudden demands of increased energy during anaerobic metabolism. This was co-expressed alongside genes involved in phagocytosis and clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME). Foraminifera may use CME to utilize dissolved organic matter as a carbon and energy source, in addition to ingestion of prey cells via phagocytosis. This dynamic mechanism helps to explain the environmental survival of benthic foraminifera as recorded in the archives of both shells and sediments. This is considered to be first of its kind work, protein 3D structures of benthic foraminifera (A. dentata), as a tool to monitor the marine pollution of India Subcontinent. This protein 3D structure is an initiative for augmentation benthic Foraminiferal metatranscriptomics for future investigations from Indian marine environments in specific and across the world in general.(c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).