A new research project is investigating how coral reefs heal from damage and withstand environmental threats, particularly those associated with climate change.
A three-year, $1.3 million grant from the W. M. Keck Foundation is funding the multicampus collaboration, with UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) leading the effort.
"Our primary goal is to develop a comprehensive model that links coral tissue damage and regeneration with overall colony growth, reproduction, survival and response to thermal stress," said Adrian Stier, lead researcher and professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at UCSB.
Although the nearest coral reefs to Kentucky are roughly a thousand miles away in Florida, the University of Kentucky's Ashley W. Seifert, Ph.D., is lending his expertise to the project as one of the research partners.
"We aim to reexamine the assumption that energy moves from healthy parts of a coral colony to help heal damaged tissue by tracking damage signals at a molecular level," said Seifert, an associate professor in the Department of Biology in the UK College of Arts and Sciences. "By integrating temperature into our experiments, we hope to better model cellular resilience in corals and identify key factors that facilitate regeneration."
Seifert's work has focused on the science behind how spiny mice can regenerate lost tissue and using that knowledge to trigger regeneration in other types of mice.
