Meeting Abstract
Coral growth is a critical aspect to reef health, resilience under rapidly changing environmental conditions, and restoration efforts. Although fragmenting has been occurring for many years in an effort to restore reefs, recently it was discovered that microfragmenting, the process of cutting one piece of coral into many small pieces (~3-5 polyps), induces exponential growth. Our study investigates the process by which microfragments of 10 different genotypes from the stony coral species Orbicella faveolata grow. Using a dissecting microscope fixed with a camera, we recorded new polyp formation on the microfragment edges. We then extracted tissue from both the edge and center of five genotypes for analysis of the Hippo Growth Pathway (HGP)expression, which is a conserved signaling pathway that is known to exist in Drosophila, mammals, and cnidaria. Two primers for the Cyclin-E transcriptional factor were utilized to determine if the Hippo Growth Pathway is present and to examine the level of expression for center and edge tissue. We found that the HGP is present in O. faveolata and that there is higher expression of the Cyclin-E transcriptional factor in edge vs. center tissue in each of five genotypes. Despite consistently higher levels of expression on the edge tissue of Cyclin-E, genotypes varied significantly in the degree to which expression differed (p = 0.001). Future work will focus on developing primers for other transcriptional factors involved with the HGP.
