Workshop for 'omics methodology development: use of secretome enriched meta-transcriptome sequencing for understanding interactions in diseased corals

珊瑚礁是美丽、独特和重要的生态系统。珊瑚生态系统是大量生物多样性的家园，提供重要的生态系统服务，并支持许多热带渔业及其相关的人类社会。珊瑚礁正以前所未有的速度死亡，导致灾难性的生态系统崩溃，威胁着生物多样性的保护，降低了全球许多热带渔业的可持续性。气候变化、过度捕捞和污染被认为是造成珊瑚礁减少的主要因素。此外，珊瑚传染病负荷和多样性的显著增加也被认为是对珊瑚礁生态系统的严重威胁。在许多情况下，气候变化、过度捕捞和污染被认为是珊瑚疾病负荷和多样性增加的驱动因素。珊瑚依赖于与生活在它们身体上和体内的微生物的复杂相互作用。因此，这些相互作用的性质，无论是有益的还是消极的，都取决于许多环境因素和生态相互作用。在自然珊瑚礁生态系统中研究这些相互作用是非常困难的，而且很难在实验室实验中准确地重建。因此，我们迫切需要新的方法，利用尖端的大规模DNA测序平台，这样我们就可以直接在自然环境中研究这些相互作用。珊瑚经历的许多复杂的相互作用，与生活在它们身体上和体内的微生物，都是通过基因介导的，这些基因编码的蛋白质从细胞中出来，进入外部环境。这些蛋白质在外部环境中发挥作用，与其他微生物和宿主珊瑚细胞相互作用。在某些情况下，这些蛋白质的功能会导致疾病，例如通过杀死或扰乱珊瑚细胞。该项目的目的是汇集一个国际科学家团体，通过对编码细胞外和在外部环境中起作用的特殊蛋白质的基因进行特异性采样和测序，开发一种新的方法来研究微生物如何与珊瑚相互作用（反之亦然）。通过制定这项协议，我们将拥有一种新的强大而直接的方法，使我们能够研究微生物如何与珊瑚相互作用从而引起疾病。建立了这种方法后，我们将建立公共访问资源和详细的协议，以便其他科学家可以使用这种方法方法研究一系列珊瑚礁疾病，并进一步将该方法用于研究自然环境中其他传染病的相互作用。这很重要，因为它将打开一扇门，让我们可以直接从环境中以新的方式研究一系列复杂的相互作用，而这些相互作用在实验室环境中是无法真实再现的。

Coral reefs are beautiful, unique and important ecosystems. Coral ecosystems are home to a huge range of biodiversity, conduct important ecosystem services and support many tropical fisheries and their associated human societies.Coral reefs are dying at an unprecedented rate leading to catastrophic ecosystem collapse, which is threatening biodiversity conservation and reducing the sustainability of many tropical fisheries around the globe. Climate change, over-fishing and pollution are recognised as the major contributing factors to coral reef decline. Furthermore, the significant increase in coral infectious disease load and diversity are also recognised as critical threats to coral reef ecosystems. In many cases climate change, over-fishing and pollution are recognised as the drivers of increased coral disease load and diversity.Corals rely on complex interactions with the microbes that live on and inside their bodies. The nature of these interactions, both beneficial and negative, are therefore dependant on numerous environmental factors and ecological interactions. These interactions are incredibly difficult to study in natural coral reef ecosystems and very difficult to reconstitute accurately in laboratory experiments. As such we drastically need new methods that make use of cutting edge large-scale DNA sequencing platforms so we can study these interactions directly in natural environments. Many of the complex interactions that corals undergo, with the microbes that live on and inside their bodies, are mediated through genes that encode proteins that exit out of the cell into the external environment. These proteins are functional in the external environment, interacting with other microbes and the host coral cells. In some cases, these proteins function to cause disease, for example by killing or perturbing the coral cells. The aim of this project is to bring together an international community of scientists to develop a new methodology for studying how microbes interact with coral (and vice versa) through specifically sampling and sequencing the genes that encode the specialised proteins that exit the cell and function in the external environment. By developing this protocol, we will have a new powerful and direct method that will enable us to study how microbes interact with coral to cause disease. Having established this method we will build public access resources and detailed protocols so that other scientists can then use this methodological approach to study a range of coral reef diseases and further adapt the approach for the study of additional infectious disease interactions in natural environments. This is important because it will unlock the door to studying a whole range of complex interactions in new ways directly from the environment, interactions which cannot be realistically recapitulated in a laboratory setting.