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

珊瑚礁是浅层底栖群落，拥有热带海洋中最高的生物多样性。 由于全球气候变化和沿海地区的人为压力，这些生态系统受到威胁。在过去的几十年里，珊瑚的健康状况以前所未有的速度恶化，因此需要立即引起关注。健康的珊瑚礁需要稳定的珊瑚-藻类共生。因此，了解这种互利共生所需的过程对于珊瑚礁保护至关重要。 检查珊瑚对细菌病原体的反应还可以揭示宿主与病原体的相互作用与影响共生相互作用的过程如何相同或不同。高通量基因表达谱（转录组学）的使用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。该项目将检查来自加勒比海的两种珊瑚-藻类共生体（珊瑚鹿角珊瑚和蒙塔斯特拉藻共生体及其占主导地位的甲藻共生体）从自然状态（即健康状态）到受干扰状态（即白化状态或患病状态）的转录组变化。这项研究的成果将有助于共生研究以及保护和管理等应用领域，包括珊瑚健康诊断的开发。该项目将在加州大学默塞德分校培训代表性不足的少数族裔。 这个新校园为弱势的中央谷社区提供高等教育和研究机会。与能源部联合基因组研究所合作开发基因组生物学课程将加强这项教育工作。 学生还将有机会通过加州大学默塞德分校网站以代表中央谷人口的三种语言（英语、西班牙语和苗族）参与环境播客。 该项目还将继续与加州科学院合作，通过教师培训研讨会成功开展外展活动。

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.