How environmental stress factors affect coral partner in symbiosis – unicellular photosynthetic dinoflagellate from genus Symbiodinum?
Scleractinian (hard) corals and unicellular photosynthetic algae (dinoflagellate) from genus Symbiodinium live in mutualistic symbiosis building CORAL REEFS. This second largest ecosystem in the world is under treat by existing environmental changes. Increased temperature, light radiation and ocean acidification affect this sensitive, mutualisitic partnership between two organisms, resulting its breakdown and coral bleaching. The fundamental aims of my research are to provide better understanding on the following questions: 1 – How unicellular photosynthetic dinoflagellate respond to stressful environmental conditions and 2 – What molecular changes result in the collapse of the coral-algal symbiosis? Applying microarray technology, I am exploring the effects of thermal and light stress on the gene expression profiles for thousands Symbiodinium genes. We discovered that high temperature (32ºC) triggered increased expression of genes encoding monoamine oxidase, ankyrin, cyclophylin, rRNA
