Paper Reviewed
Dineshram, R., Quan, Q., Sharma, R., Chandramouli, K., Yalamanchili, H.K., Chu, I. and Thiyagarajan, V. 2015. Comparative and quantitative proteomics reveal the adaptive strategies of oyster larvae to ocean acidification. Proteomics 15: 4120-4134.

Using well-established oyster hatchery methodology, Dineshram et al. (2015) cultured embryos of a commercially important oyster (Crassostrea hongkongensis) in 350-liter seawater tanks they maintained at either ambient pH (8.1) or reduced pH (7.6) -- the latter of which they created by continually bubbling half of the seawater tanks with air enriched to a CO2 concentration of about 2000 ppm -- within which the embryos were cultured from their larval to pediveliger stage. And what did they thereby learn?

The seven researchers report that over 7% of the oysters' proteome (its entire set of proteins) was altered in response to the CO2-induced decline in seawater pH, i.e., ocean acidification. And they additionally note that these upregulations occurred in proteins that are involved in calcification, metabolic processes and oxidative stress, each of which, in their words, "may be important in physiological adaptation of this species to ocean acidification," while at the other end of the protein spectrum, they indicate "there were no significant detrimental effects in developmental processes such as metamorphic success."

As for the significance of these findings, Dineshram et al. write that "these alterations lead us to hypothesize that increased metabolic processes together with stress-related proteins are the mechanisms used by the larvae as a favorable metabolic platform that ensured normal metamorphosis under ocean acidification conditions," such that all's well that ends well, as one might say, in more common expression.