Great Barrier Reef Coral Sampling 2010

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Going to the natural environment, as opposed to an artificial setting like the laboratory, is essential to truly understand how bacteria respond to stress and the consequence of that response on their evolution and their ecosystem. To investigate this question, we plan to go to an environment where several environmental stresses are naturally frequent and where our model bacteria, the vibrio, are abundant. The surface of corals is densely populated with vibrios, which are exposed to high oxygen concentrations produced by the photosynthetics activity of coral symbiotic algae, as well as intense ultraviolet light from the sun, as coral reefs sit just below the ocean's surface. This is the perfect natural model to test the effect of environmental stress on bacteria. Furthermore, vibrios have been shown to be responsible for the bleaching of some corals - threatening one of the richest ecosystems on earth. We will be joining a cruise to monitor coral health on the great barrier reef in Australia, giving us a unique opportunity to access samples of corals during the day and at the ocean's surface (region of high stress) as well as during the night and at depth (region of low stress). Comparing these samples exposed to high and low environmental stresses will allow us to have a better understanding of how microbes react to stress in nature, which is essential if we want to manage and contain microbial populations in the environment.