Abstract
Individual life history influences the phenotype and the phenotype of offspring. The different component of the heritability system including genetic and non-genetic heritability and their interactions are key mechanisms to generate these heritable phenotypes. Phenotype heritability can allow parents to transmit a better adaptive capacity in response to rapid local environmental changes, to their offspring. The pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas is a marine organism of economic interest as the main producing oysters worldwide. Oyster are sessile and filtering organisms which made them very sensitive to environmental pressures. Thus, the presence of pollutants and pathogens in the aquatic environment can have harmful consequences on oysters potentially leading to oysters’ death. The main objectives of my thesis were to decipher the part of different heritable mechanisms (genetic, epigenetic and microbiota) in the environmental response of oysters to two environmental stresses and to improve our knowledge about epigenetic transmission information in molluscs. During my PhD, I (i) realized a bibliographic study to identify main epigenetic factors implied in environmental response and heritability in molluscs ; (ii) study the influence of a parental exposure to a pesticide, the diuron, on the methylome and the gene expression of offspring and (iii) characterized the genetic, epigenetic, transcriptomic and microbiotic impact of an precocious microbial exposure on the survival capacity of pacific oyster when faced to Pacific Oysters Mortality Syndrome, a disease, inducing massive mortalities in oysters’ juveniles, thus on three generation. The main results of my PhD allow to highlight the influence of environmental stresses on phenotype by methylome modifications of oysters and their offspring. In the case of the response to POMS, the microbial exposure as allowed to improve the oysters’ resistance and constitute so an adaptive phenotype illustrating the potential role of epigenetic mechanisms in adaptive evolution.