CAREER: Coral Health Genomics: Transcriptome Analysis of two Caribbean Species and their Algal Symbionts

珊瑚礁是热带海洋中生物多样性最高的浅层底栖生物群落。由于全球气候变化和来自沿海地区的人为压力，这些生态系统处于濒危状态。在过去的几十年里，珊瑚的健康状况正以前所未有的速度衰退，因此需要立即引起注意。健康的珊瑚礁需要稳定的珊瑚-藻类共生关系。因此，了解这种共生关系所需的过程是珊瑚礁保护的基础。研究珊瑚对细菌病原体的反应也可以揭示宿主-病原体相互作用与影响共生相互作用的过程是如何相同或不同的。使用高通量基因表达谱（转录组学）是一种相对较新的基因组学方法，有望加强对这些相互作用的研究。本项目将研究加勒比地区两种珊瑚-藻类共生体（Acropora palmata珊瑚和Montastraea faveolata珊瑚及其优势的甲藻共生体）的转录组从自然（即健康）到受干扰状态（即漂白或患病）的变化。这项研究的结果将有助于对共生关系的研究以及诸如保护和管理等应用领域，包括发展珊瑚健康诊断。该项目将在加州大学默塞德分校培训未被充分代表的少数族裔。这个新校区为贫困的中央山谷社区提供了高等教育和研究的机会。这项教育工作将通过与美国能源部联合基因组研究所合作开发基因组生物学课程而得到加强。学生还将有机会通过加州大学默塞德分校网站参与环境播客，该网站使用三种代表中央山谷人口的语言（英语，西班牙语和苗族语）。该项目还将继续与加州科学院合作，通过教师培训讲习班成功开展外展活动。

Coral reefs are shallow benthic communities that harbor the highest biodiversity in tropical seas. These ecosystems are endangered due to global climate change and anthropogenic pressure from coastal areas. Coral health has been decaying at unprecedented rates in the past decades and is therefore in need of immediate attention. A healthy reef requires a stable coral-algal symbiosis. Thus, understanding the processes required for this mutualism is fundamental for coral reef preservation. Examining how corals respond to bacterial pathogens can also shed light onto how host-pathogen interactions may be the same or differ from processes that affect symbiotic interactions. The use of high throughput gene expression profiling (transcriptomics) is a relatively new genomics approach that promises to enhance the study of these interactions. This project will examine the transcriptome as it varies from natural (i.e., healthy) to disturbed states (i.e., bleached or diseased) in two coral-algal symbioses from the Caribbean: the corals Acropora palmata and Montastraea faveolata and their dominant dinoflagellate symbionts. The outcome of this research will contribute to the study of symbiosis as well as to applied fields such as conservation and management, including the development of coral health diagnostics. This project will train underrepresented minorities at the University of California, Merced. This new campus offers higher education and research opportunities to the disadvantaged Central Valley communities. This educational effort will be enhanced by a partnership with the DOE Joint Genome Institute to develop a course in Genome Biology. Students will also have the opportunity to be involved in environmental podcasting through the UC Merced website in three languages representative of the Central Valley populations (English, Spanish and Hmong). The project will also continue with successful outreach activities in collaboration the California Academy of Sciences through teacher training workshops.