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海底栖生物群落。 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。过去几十年来，珊瑚的健康状况以前所未有的速度恶化，因此需要立即予以关注。健康的珊瑚礁需要稳定的珊瑚藻共生。因此，了解这种互利共生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-病原体相互作用如何与影响共生相互作用的过程相同或不同。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。该项目将检查转录组，因为它不同于自然（即，健康的）到受干扰的状态（即，在来自加勒比的两种珊瑚-藻类共生体中发现了一种新的（白化或患病）现象：鹿角珊瑚（Acropora palmata）和蜂窝状珊瑚（Montastraea faveolata）及其占优势的甲藻共生体。这项研究的成果将有助于共生研究以及养护和管理等应用领域，包括珊瑚健康诊断的发展。该项目将在默塞德的加州大学培训代表性不足的少数群体。 这个新校区为处境不利的中央谷社区提供高等教育和研究机会。这项教育工作将通过与能源部联合基因组研究所合作开发基因组生物学课程来加强。 学生还将有机会通过UC默塞德网站以三种语言代表中央谷人口（英语，西班牙语和苗族）参与环境播客。 该项目还将继续通过教师培训讲习班与加州科学院合作开展成功的推广活动。

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.