ABOVE: A fluorescence image of the sea anemone Exaiptasia pallida containing Breviolum minutum algae (small red dots throughout)
TINGTING XIANG
Some anemones and corals depend on symbiotic relationships with the photosynthetic algae living inside them for survival. Algae produce sugars that the sea creatures use for food, and in return, they get nutrients such as carbon dioxide, phosphorus, sulfur, and nitrogen. The hosts have to keep their algae populations in check. Too few can lead to starvation and coral bleaching, while too many can overburden the host’s metabolism. Just how they manage algae numbers was unknown until now. A study released in Nature Communications on January 8 has revealed that anemones control their algae by limiting the supply of shared nitrogen.
A research team led by Tingting Xiang, a plant biologist at the University of North Carolina Charlotte who performed the work as a postdoc at the Carnegie...
“With ongoing research, we hope to even better understand the various mechanisms and specific regulators that are crucial for integrating the metabolisms of these two organisms, which could eventually allow for the transplantation of hardier algae into bleached coral and also for manipulating both corals and algae to have greater tolerance to adverse conditions,” Xiang says in a news release.
T. Xiang et al., “Symbiont population control by host-symbiont metabolic interaction in Symbiodiniaceae-cnidarian associations,” Nat Commun, doi:10.1038/s41467-019-13963-z, 2020.
Emily Makowski is an intern at The Scientist. Email her at emakowski@the-scientist.com.
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