WIKIMEDIA, AHMED ABDUL RAHMANResearchers have identified an enzyme that helps corals keep a steady pH in their cells, even as the acidity changes in their environments. Corals experience pH variation due to fluctuations in cellular metabolism, the differing pH needs of various parts of the coral polyp, and even the changing acidity of the ocean itself. The enzyme, soluble adenylyl cyclase (sAC), produces cyclic AMP (cAMP), a signaling molecule that researchers suspect triggers further chemical reactions to raise or lower cellular pH as needed.
Whether sAC can help corals withstand the ocean acidification that accompanies global climate change remains to be determined. The results appear today (November 1) in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
“This is the first report or study showing cellular and molecular mechanisms by which corals can sense changes in pH and also adjust their intracellular pH,” says Martin Tresguerres, who led the work at the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “Corals, as part of their physiology, they have huge changes in pH in different parts of the coral animal. And this is a first step to understand how they sense those changes and regulate their physiology accordingly.”
Most studies of sAC in mammals have measured extracellular pH, says Jung-Chin Chang, ...
