Coral Harmony: Navigating Climate Change Together

The intricate symbiotic association between corals and algae is vital for maintaining coral reef health and marine biodiversity, and it plays an important role in fixing atmospheric CO₂. However, anthropogenic climate change has raised ocean temperatures to such an extent that mass coral bleaching events, which disrupt the coral-algal interface and lead to expulsion of algae from the coral, have started to occur on a frequent basis. Current projections of this trend paint a bleak picture, with 90% of the world’s coral reefs at risk of disappearing due to coral bleaching by 2050. The molecular basis of coral bleaching is however very poorly understood, and this process remains completely unstudied from the viewpoint of modern structural biology techniques. The purpose of this project is to fill this gap, providing a platform for interventions that help stabilize the coral-algal symbiosis at elevated sea temperatures and safeguard the coral reefs for future generations.