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Found a neat article on science titled
I can't seem to get the link to work but I wanted to share the name so you all could look it up. I also copied the text below.
Reefs are vibrant, living structures laid down over time by tiny tentacled animals. But how exactly corals construct the crystals that become the reefs’ craggy rocks—a process known as biomineralization—has long been a mystery. In June, University of Florida (UF) marine biologist Federica Scucchia believed she and her colleagues had finally made a breakthrough. Peering through a microscope at blue and red blobs along the tentacle of a 0.6-millimeter anemone, a soft-bodied coral relative, Scucchia saw signs that the team had managed to coax the creature to produce a coral protein that concentrates reef-building calcium. “I was like, ‘Wow! This cannot be!’” she recalls.
The finding, reported on 5 October in a bioRxiv preprint, has excited coral researchers. Anemones are far easier to manipulate in the lab than corals, which could enable researchers to dissect the workings of biomineralization. That could improve their ability to predict how climate change will affect critical reef ecosystems. “For over 10 years now, I have been trying to find a way to use an invertebrate as a model system for biomineralization studies,” says Tali Mass, a coral physiologist and biomineralization expert at the University of Haifa. The new result marks progress toward that goal, she says.
Scientists have glimpsed some elements of the chemical feat by which corals pull calcium and carbonate ions from seawater and fuse them into reef-building minerals. They know that, in special compartments, corals concentrate ions along with proteins and other molecules to make a slurry known as calcifying fluid. By controlling the contents of this fluid, the corals can encourage the minerals to crystallize into calcium carbonate.
Anemones, however, are a breeze to work with, and scientists have created genetically engineered anemone lines like those made in mice and other model organisms. Years ago, Martindale was studying the development of a small anemone species called the starlet sea anemone (Nematostella vectensis) and had gotten “pretty bored of it.” He had a wild thought: “Why can’t you make a coral out of an anemone?”
After all, anemones and corals are fairly closely related—they’re both Cnidarians— points out Martindale’s laboratory technician, Brent Foster. Anemones share with corals some of the same genes that have been previously implicated in biomineralization. What anemones notably lack are genes for so-called intrinsically disordered proteins, which play crucial roles in accumulating calcium and carbonate ions.
Could an anemone be engineered to make these proteins? To find out, Martindale and colleagues injected the gene that codes for a disordered protein called SpCARP1 directly into Nematostella embryos. A fluorescing red molecule indicated the gene was active. The anemone was indeed making the protein.
But was it actually concentrating calcium? Scucchia drew on experience with corals to suggest adding a different fluorescent molecule, Calcein Blue, that glows in the presence of calcium. Sure enough, the same regions making SpCARP1 also seemed to be aggregating calcium. Although many more changes will likely be required before the anemone will create carbonate crystals, this is an important first step, Scucchia says. Foster adds that the team was “pretty excited” when it saw that. “It took us a long time to get there.”
It’s a “really exciting” result, says University of Rhode Island molecular ecophysiologist Hollie Putnam. She adds that scientists can use this basic model to better understand biomineralization by corals, as well as how the process could be affected by environmental change. Rising water temperatures, acidification, and other environmental factors are already taking a toll on reefs around the world. With engineered anemones, researchers could uncover which versions of genes might make reefs more resilient in the face of likely future conditions.
However, Pupa Gilbert, a biophysicist and geobiologist who studies biomineralization at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says the preprint is “interesting” but she’s “lukewarm” about its significance to understanding biomineralization. She’d prefer researchers focus on corals directly, for example by knocking out specific genes and observing how their absence affects mineralization.
For Martindale, Scucchia, and colleagues, the next step will be to add coral proteins one by one to anemones to try to get them to create actual calcium carbonate crystals—and possibly the minerals of other animals, such as those in echinoderm spines or mammalian tooth enamel.
“We’re trying to push the envelope and see what we’re able to do,” Foster says.
doi: 10.1126/science.adl5719
‘Why can’t you make a coral out of an anemone?’
I can't seem to get the link to work but I wanted to share the name so you all could look it up. I also copied the text below.
Reefs are vibrant, living structures laid down over time by tiny tentacled animals. But how exactly corals construct the crystals that become the reefs’ craggy rocks—a process known as biomineralization—has long been a mystery. In June, University of Florida (UF) marine biologist Federica Scucchia believed she and her colleagues had finally made a breakthrough. Peering through a microscope at blue and red blobs along the tentacle of a 0.6-millimeter anemone, a soft-bodied coral relative, Scucchia saw signs that the team had managed to coax the creature to produce a coral protein that concentrates reef-building calcium. “I was like, ‘Wow! This cannot be!’” she recalls.
The finding, reported on 5 October in a bioRxiv preprint, has excited coral researchers. Anemones are far easier to manipulate in the lab than corals, which could enable researchers to dissect the workings of biomineralization. That could improve their ability to predict how climate change will affect critical reef ecosystems. “For over 10 years now, I have been trying to find a way to use an invertebrate as a model system for biomineralization studies,” says Tali Mass, a coral physiologist and biomineralization expert at the University of Haifa. The new result marks progress toward that goal, she says.
Scientists have glimpsed some elements of the chemical feat by which corals pull calcium and carbonate ions from seawater and fuse them into reef-building minerals. They know that, in special compartments, corals concentrate ions along with proteins and other molecules to make a slurry known as calcifying fluid. By controlling the contents of this fluid, the corals can encourage the minerals to crystallize into calcium carbonate.
Scientists have also identified many of the genes thought to be involved in this process. But pinning down their actual roles in mineralization has proved to be a nightmare. Corals are finicky and difficult to breed in the lab, explains UF developmental biologist Mark Martindale, making them “a pain in the butt” for genetic engineering.Anemones, however, are a breeze to work with, and scientists have created genetically engineered anemone lines like those made in mice and other model organisms. Years ago, Martindale was studying the development of a small anemone species called the starlet sea anemone (Nematostella vectensis) and had gotten “pretty bored of it.” He had a wild thought: “Why can’t you make a coral out of an anemone?”
After all, anemones and corals are fairly closely related—they’re both Cnidarians— points out Martindale’s laboratory technician, Brent Foster. Anemones share with corals some of the same genes that have been previously implicated in biomineralization. What anemones notably lack are genes for so-called intrinsically disordered proteins, which play crucial roles in accumulating calcium and carbonate ions.
Could an anemone be engineered to make these proteins? To find out, Martindale and colleagues injected the gene that codes for a disordered protein called SpCARP1 directly into Nematostella embryos. A fluorescing red molecule indicated the gene was active. The anemone was indeed making the protein.
But was it actually concentrating calcium? Scucchia drew on experience with corals to suggest adding a different fluorescent molecule, Calcein Blue, that glows in the presence of calcium. Sure enough, the same regions making SpCARP1 also seemed to be aggregating calcium. Although many more changes will likely be required before the anemone will create carbonate crystals, this is an important first step, Scucchia says. Foster adds that the team was “pretty excited” when it saw that. “It took us a long time to get there.”
It’s a “really exciting” result, says University of Rhode Island molecular ecophysiologist Hollie Putnam. She adds that scientists can use this basic model to better understand biomineralization by corals, as well as how the process could be affected by environmental change. Rising water temperatures, acidification, and other environmental factors are already taking a toll on reefs around the world. With engineered anemones, researchers could uncover which versions of genes might make reefs more resilient in the face of likely future conditions.
However, Pupa Gilbert, a biophysicist and geobiologist who studies biomineralization at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says the preprint is “interesting” but she’s “lukewarm” about its significance to understanding biomineralization. She’d prefer researchers focus on corals directly, for example by knocking out specific genes and observing how their absence affects mineralization.
For Martindale, Scucchia, and colleagues, the next step will be to add coral proteins one by one to anemones to try to get them to create actual calcium carbonate crystals—and possibly the minerals of other animals, such as those in echinoderm spines or mammalian tooth enamel.
“We’re trying to push the envelope and see what we’re able to do,” Foster says.
doi: 10.1126/science.adl5719
