Australia: Researchers embrace a radical idea: engineering coral to cope with climate change
By Warren Cornwall
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Just 75 kilometers offshore from the research center, Australia's Great Barrier Reef—the world's largest—has been battered by a string of marine heat waves that have killed half its coral. The threat has transformed Van Oppen into a leading advocate for something considered radical just a few years ago: creating breeds of coral that can withstand underwater heat waves. And it has helped make Australia, which recently committed a hefty $300 million to coral research and restoration, a global magnet for reef scientists.
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Coral's most remarkable characteristic—being an animal that is part plant—is also its Achilles' heel in a hotter world. Normally, coral polyps—the individual coral organisms, which resemble a sea anemone the size of a pinhead—live in harmony with their algal partners, which help feed the polyps and give corals their bright colors. But during heat waves, the relationship sours. Overheated polyps perceive the algae as an irritant and eject them like unwanted squatters. The coral is left bleached, bone-white and starving. If the heat persists, the coral won't take in new algae and can die.
The bond between coral and algae is complicated, however, and still not fully understood. Just 25 years ago, for example, researchers believed that coral housed just one variety of symbiotic algae. Now, they have identified hundreds. And they are just beginning to examine the role played by the coral's microbiome, the menagerie of bacteria that inhabit a coral polyp.
But the complexity also offers multiple paths for scientists trying to forge a less fragile bond between coral and algae. Today, four major lines of research exist: One involves cross-breeding corals to create heat-tolerant varieties, either by mixing strains within a species or by crossing two species that would not normally interbreed. The second enlists genetic engineering techniques to tweak coral or algae. A third tries to rapidly evolve hardier strains of coral and algae by rearing them for generations in overheated lab conditions. A fourth approach, the newest, seeks to manipulate the coral's microbiome.
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