🪸 Coral Multi-'Omics Explorer

Multi-'Omic analyses of reef-building corals · build 2026-06-08-r28

P. acutathermal stress
P. acutatemp. × pCO₂
P. acutatrans-gen
S. hystrixvariable temp.
P. acutareference genome
S. fittireference genome
A. cervicornisresilience
O. faveolatableaching resilience
O. faveolatareference genome
Symbiodiniaceaemerged endosymbionts
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Select a species tab to load a built-in dataset, or click Load JSON to import your own.

Need to generate the JSON? Run prep_transcriptome_data.py on your NGS folder.

Volcano Plot
Differential expression
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Showing top 5,000 most-variable contigs. Hover over a point to see its ID.
Heatmap
Top 50 most-variable contigs across all samples
🧬 Custom gene set — paste your own contig IDs
Expression Table
All filtered contigs — search, sort, and filter
ℹ Glossary — what the abbreviations mean
FC = fold change  ·  FPKM = fragments per kb per million reads (expression unit)  ·  GO = Gene Ontology term  ·  KEGG / KO = KEGG Ortholog (K-number)  ·  log2FC = log2 fold change between the two conditions  ·  p = Welch two-sample t-test p-value  ·  qPCR = quantitative real-time PCR
Contig log₂FC p-value Mean A Mean B Top BLAST hit KEGG / GO qPCR
Cross-experiment ortholog search
Find the same gene across Pocillopora acuta (PDLTTE, PDpCO₂, & genome), Seriatopora hystrix, Acropora cervicornis, Orbicella faveolata, Symbiodinium fitti, and the merged Symbiodiniaceae database — linked by KEGG ortholog (KO) or eggNOG gene name
🔗

Enter a gene name or KEGG ortholog ID.

GO / KEGG Enrichment
Over-representation of GO terms & KEGG orthologs among the differentially expressed genes
ℹ Glossary — what the abbreviations mean
bg = background (all annotated genes the DEGs are compared against)  ·  DEG = differentially expressed genes (here, |log2FC| ≥ 1 and p < 0.05)  ·  FC = fold change  ·  expected = DEGs expected by chance  ·  FDR = false-discovery rate (Benjamini–Hochberg-corrected p)  ·  fold = enrichment fold (observed ÷ expected DEGs for that term)  ·  FPKM = fragments per kb per million reads (expression unit)  ·  GO = Gene Ontology term  ·  KO = KEGG Ortholog (K-number)  ·  log2FC = log2 fold change between the two conditions  ·  p = p-value (hypergeometric test)
Hypergeometric test vs the annotated dataset background · BH-FDR.
📈

Select a comparison with DE results.

KEGG Pathways
Differentially expressed contigs grouped by KEGG pathway
No KEGG annotation in the current dataset. Add a "kegg_ids" field (semicolon-separated) per contig in your JSON to enable this view.
Global metabolism map (KEGG map01100)

Open the KEGG global metabolic-pathways map with this dataset's KEGG orthologs (KOs) overlaid — shaded by representation (darker = more genes mapped to that reaction). Rendered on KEGG; for the complete KO set, download the list and paste it into KEGG Mapper's "Search&Color Pathway".

BLAST Search
Nucleotide/protein sequence search against this host coral transcriptome
BLAST requires a server-side backend. To enable: install NCBI BLAST+ locally and run transcriptome_server.py --make-blast-db.
Query sequence (FASTA format)
Or use NCBI BLAST ↗
blastn: paste a nucleotide sequence to find matching transcripts.
Proteomics search (MS-GF+)
Identify peptides/proteins in your mass-spec data against the curated sequence databases
Upload spectra and choose a database
Accepts .mzML / .mzML.gz or Thermo .raw directly (converted on-the-fly via ThermoRawFileParser). Results are filtered to a 1% false-discovery rate. First search per database is slower (MS-GF+ builds its index).
Download Data
Export expression tables and DE results
Current dataset

No dataset loaded.

FASTA & TSV honor the filters set on the Expression Table tab (compartment, molecule, DE, and search) and the active comparison. The client export covers the contigs loaded in the browser (top by variance + all DE). For the complete filtered set (e.g. every host mRNA), use the server export when the backend is online:

Download full sequence subsets (FASTA)

Complete, gzipped nucleotide FASTA for an entire compartment of an experiment — e.g. every Symbiodiniaceae (endosymbiont) sequence from S. hystrix. Hosted directly; no backend needed.

loading available files…
Functional annotation — NCBI nr BLAST

Complete DIAMOND blastx of the P. acuta PDpCO₂ de novo transcriptome against NCBI nr — the top hit per contig with % identity, alignment length, e-value, bit-score, source organism, and description. 239,914 contigs annotated (of 385,298; the rest have no nr homolog). Per-contig hits are already shown in the Expression Table and gene popups; this is the full set. TSV, gzipped.

📄 PDpCO₂ nr BLAST hits — 239,914 contigs (TSV.gz, 4 MB)
Reference data & help
🧬 PDLTTE host genotype (mORF alignment, FASTA) 📖 Help / README 🧫 qPCR assay files

The host genotype is the PDLTTE mitochondrial ORF (mORF) alignment vs P. damicornis mitogenomes. qPCR primer/sequence files are also linked inline (🧫 qPCR) from the Expression Table for genes with a designed assay.

Reference sequences (predicted proteomes, FASTA)

Complete predicted-protein FASTA for each reference genome/transcriptome (gzipped) — the full genome-derived sets, including proteins not detected by MS.

🧬 P. acuta genome proteome 🧬 A. cervicornis genome proteome (33,322) 🧬 S. fitti genome proteome (37,621) 🧬 O. faveolata host proteome (73,093) 🧬 O. faveolata symbiont · SYMBOF (76,145)

Nucleotide transcriptomes (mRNA):

🧬 O. faveolata host transcriptome (87,440) 🧬 O. faveolata symbiont transcriptome (114,424)

Nucleotide genome assemblies are at their original sources: P. acutaVidal-Dupiol et al. 2019; S. fittiReich et al. 2021; A. cervicornis — Baums lab.

Study supplements

Original supplementary data files from the published studies.

📊 McRae et al. OSDF.xlsx — iTRAQ ratios, DCPs & annotations
Proteomic raw data — external repositories

Raw mass-spectrometry files are large and are archived in public proteomics repositories rather than re-hosted here:

SHVTS iTRAQ — MassIVE MSV000085863 ↗ SHVTS — NOAA NCEI ↗ PDpCO₂ iTRAQ — MassIVE MSV000085868 ↗
JSON schema

Each JSON file should have this top-level structure. Per-contig fields:

{
  "species": "Seriatopora hystrix",
  "study": "SHVTS",
  "comparison": "Variable vs. Stable thermal regime",
  "total_contigs": 209481,
  "samples": ["HBH_V_1","HBH_V_2","HBH_V_3","HWN_S_1","HWN_S_2","HWN_S_3"],
  "sample_meta": [{"name":"HBH_V_1","site":"Houbihu","condition":"Variable","rep":1}, ...],
  "contigs": [
    {
      "id": "comp12345_c0_seq1",
      "lfc": 2.34,          // log2 fold change (Variable / Stable)
      "pval": 0.0012,        // p-value (Welch t-test or DESeq2 padj)
      "nlp": 2.92,           // -log10(pval) — for volcano y-axis
      "ms": 12.4,            // mean FPKM in Stable condition
      "mv": 55.1,            // mean FPKM in Variable condition
      "var": 180.2,          // variance across all samples
      "fpkm": [44,60,62, 10,14,15],  // per-sample FPKM (order matches "samples")
      "top_blast_hit": "heat shock protein 70 [Acropora digitifera]",
      "blast_evalue": 1.2e-45,
      "gene_name": "hsp70",
      "kegg_ids": "K04043",  // semicolon-separated if multiple
      "go_terms": "GO:0006950;GO:0051082",
      "annotation": "Stress response / chaperone"
    }
  ],
  // Optional: multiple DE contrasts (e.g. PDLTTE 2×2 factorial)
  "contrasts": [
    {
      "name": "High vs. Control — Week 2",
      "comparison": "30°C vs. 27°C at week 2",
      "contigs": [ ...same schema... ]
    },
    {
      "name": "High vs. Control — Week 36",
      "comparison": "30°C vs. 27°C at week 36",
      "contigs": [ ... ]
    }
  ]
}
About
Coral Multi-'Omics Explorer — datasets and methods
Experiment
Methods

Expression values are FPKM (Fragments Per Kilobase of transcript per Million reads mapped), quantified with RSEM. Differential expression in this explorer uses Welch two-sample t-tests between user-selected conditions; log₂ fold change uses a pseudocount of 0.1 to handle zero-FPKM values. KEGG annotations via KOBAS; functional annotations via Pfam-HMM and HMMER. Protein sequences from TransDecoder ORF prediction (6-frame translation fallback when .pep unavailable). BLAST search (blastn, blastp, blastx, tblastn, and tblastx) requires the local server to be running with pre-built databases.

Citations

Data Access

This explorer was built by Coral Reef Diagnostics. The original interactive websites for these datasets (hosted at the Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica, Taiwan) are no longer online. This site aims to restore full queryability of both transcriptomes. Source data are from the published supplementary materials and original sequencing files.

Analysis methods in this explorer
  • Differential expression: main effects by Welch two-sample t-test on log₂(FPKM+0.1); the temperature×time / site×treatment / temperature×CO₂ interaction term by two-way ANOVA (balanced designs) or an OLS interaction t-test (unbalanced PDpCO₂). "DEG" = |log₂FC|≥1 and p<0.05.
  • Compartment classification (host / Symbiodiniaceae / microbe): every contig is binned by sequence homology — eggNOG / NCBI-nr best-hit lineage (host = Metazoa; symbiont = Alveolata, Stramenopiles, or green plants, sensu Mayfield et al. 2014; microbe = Bacteria/Archaea/Virus) supplemented by DIAMOND blastx against species-matched host + Symbiodiniaceae proteomes for contigs lacking an annotation. Contigs with no homology default to host.
  • Host : Symbiodiniaceae normalization (toggle): each sample's host-gene values are divided by its host:Symbiodiniaceae contig ratio, and Symbiodiniaceae-gene values by the inverse (Symbiodiniaceae:host), then rescaled to the cross-sample mean — so compartment-heavy samples are down-weighted, controlling for differing symbiont load (sensu Mayfield et al. 2014).
  • GO / KEGG enrichment: hypergeometric over-representation of the DEG set against the annotated dataset background, Benjamini–Hochberg FDR.
  • Sample ordination (PCA): principal components of the top-variance genes (log₂ FPKM, gene-centered).
  • Cross-experiment orthologs: genes linked across experiments by shared KEGG ortholog (KO) and eggNOG gene name.
  • Proteomics: iTRAQ abundances normalized to the pooled reference channel; qPCR normalized to Solaris & genome-copy-proportion spikes; on-the-fly peptide search via MS-GF+ (1% FDR).
Understanding the protein numbers
  • Hypothetical proteome — every protein the organism is predicted to make: the full conceptually-translated reference (e.g. O. faveolata host 73,093; in-hospite Symbiodiniaceae 76,145). For the corals/symbionts assembled de novo, these are ORFs translated from the reference transcriptome; for A. cervicornis / S. fitti they come from the Baums reference genomes.
  • Sequenced — proteins actually identified by mass spectrometry (master protein at High/Medium FDR), pooled across all iTRAQ/TMT batches of a study. This is the headline count on each proteome panel.
  • iTRAQ-quantified only (toggle) — the far smaller subset of sequenced proteins that additionally carry quantitative iTRAQ reporter-ion ratios. Ticking the box filters the table and headline count to these.
  • Composite Symbiodiniaceae reference: the in-hospite Symbiodiniaceae proteome is a composite, conceptually translated from multiple co-assembled transcriptomes — the symbiont community spans more than one genus (e.g. Breviolum + Durusdinium in O. faveolata), so transcripts from several Symbiodiniaceae are represented together.
How to cite

Please cite the original study for any dataset you use (DOIs above), and you may additionally acknowledge this explorer:

Coral Multi-'Omics Explorer, Coral Reef Diagnostics (coralreefdiagnostics.com), accessed [date].

Data availability: PDLTTE assembly & expression — NCBI BioProject PRJNA227785 and Dryad 10.5061/dryad.rh04m; SHVTS — Mol. Ecol. 2016 supplements; SHVTS iTRAQ proteome — MassIVE MSV000085863 (cross-listed at NOAA NCEI); PDpCO₂ adult-coral iTRAQ proteome — MassIVE MSV000085868; P. acuta reference genome — Vidal-Dupiol et al. 2019 (bioRxiv 698688); S. fitti genome — Reich et al. 2021 (Mol. Ecol.)