Team:GZHS-United/Description
Project Inspiration and Description of GZHS-United
A coral reefs is an underwater ecosystem. Reefs are formed of colonies of coral polyps held together by calcium carbonate. Corals owe their beautiful colors in part to symbiotic algae, which live inside the coral cells.
Fig1. The algae cell in corals(by Wooldridge)[1]
Coral reefs are sensitive to the temperature of the water for algae’s respond to elevated temperatures which connects with the coral bleaching.
We concerned about how exactly the coral bleaching happened and found that the hydrogen peroxide may be the most significant signaling molecule between coral and algae in this intercellular communication.
Fig2. Exposed to high temperatures, many of those corals will die. Credit: XL Catlin Seaview Survey[2]
Algae has enzymes to remove hydrogen peroxide[3], however the concentration of hydrogen peroxide has been up too much that they can't afford.
We pay attention to APX which takes part in removing hydrogen peroxide in algae, hoping to explore APX in vitro, such as observing and measuring the enzymatic reaction, clarifying the functional correlation between H2O2 binding site[4] and APX by the help of synthetic biology analysis, so as to help the later study concerning how to restore the coral-zooxanthellae symbiosis against coral bleaching.
[1]http://www.leadingtec.cn/zooxanthellae.html
[2]http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coral-crisis-great-barrier-reef-bleaching-is-the-worst-we-ve-ever-seen/
[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutathione-ascorbate_cycle
[4]Krueger T, Fisher P L, Becker S, et al. Transcriptomic characterization of the enzymatic antioxidants FeSOD, MnSOD, APX and KatG in the dinoflagellate genus Symbiodinium[J]. BMC evolutionary biology, 2015, 15(1): 48.