About This Project

Coral use green fluorescent protein (GFP) emissions to attract algal symbionts that provide energy to the coral. Bleaching occurs when coral evict their symbionts which can result in the death of the coral in the absence of new recruitment. Human activity has resulted in five mass coral bleaching events to date. The goal of our research is to use CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing tools to alter GFP expression, thereby increasing symbiont recruitment for long-term reef health and sustainability.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Many reef-building corals produce light-emitting GFP. Symbiont species are known to develop eyespots that are utilized to detect light. The Beacon Hypothesis suggests that corals use their fluorescent proteins to attract and recruit symbionts. Recent research supports this hypothesis. Increased coral GFP expression could potentially increase symbiont recruitment after bleaching. The CRISPR/Cas9 system which has been used to edit the genomes of many species, can induce mutations, and introduce new genetic material into targeted locations of an organism’s genome. Cleeve et al. have used CRISPR/Cas9 in coral species to induce mutations into several genes. Their work establishes that the technique is applicable to coral.

What is the significance of this project?

Coral reefs cover less than 0.1% of the planet yet are home to 25% of marine life, and support the greatest biodiversity among marine habitats with an estimated 30% of identified fish species located on coral reefs. Reef systems absorb up to 97% of wave energy from storms at sea, protecting coasts from flooding and erosion. Their biodiversity, role in the maintenance of commercial fisheries, absorption of wave energy, in addition to their attraction as tourism destinations, place the value of coral reefs between $1 – 20 trillion dollars. If fluorescent protein expression increases symbiont recruitment of coral then one novel approach to counteracting bleaching is to increase coral GFP expression. Artificially increasing expression may improve coral conservation.

What are the goals of the project?

Receipt of funding will allow for the acquisition of coral species, new husbandry equipment to create a working coral lab, supply consumables for the genetics lab, and update spectrometer software to measure fluorescence emission.

We will establish a stable coral colony to be used for DNA extraction. We will Identify PCR priming sites to amplify the GFP protein coding regions, extract DNA from coral species and PCR amplify coding regions. As well, we will determine whether the amplified sequences are of the correct region through restriction digest if possible, and clone verified products. We will then examine all sequences for potential CRISPR targets and analyze these potential targets for use for CRISPR based genome manipulation.