How sponges and bacteria maintain productivity on coral reefs

这个项目旨在倾听大堡礁海绵和它的细菌共生体之间的对话。珊瑚礁通过有效地保留和循环基本元素，在营养贫乏的热带海洋中茁壮成长。海洋海绵通过与代谢多样的细菌共生体合作，通过很大程度上未知的机制来帮助珊瑚礁。利用先进的基因组激活海绵、无脊椎动物生物学、微生物学、基因组学和代谢组学，该项目旨在揭示合作伙伴关系的基因组和代谢细节，这可能为环境恢复、制药和生物技术提供信息。

This project aims to listen in on conversations between a Great Barrier Reef sponge and its bacterial symbionts. Coral reefs thrive in nutrient-poor tropical seas by efficiently retaining and recycling essential elements. Marine sponges help coral reefs by co-operating with metabolically diverse bacterial symbionts via largely unknown mechanisms. Using an advanced genome-enabled sponge, invertebrate biology, microbiology, genomics and metabolomics, this project seeks to reveal genomic and metabolic details of the partnership, which could inform environmental restoration, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology.