Researchers find new method to allow corals to rapidly respond to climate change
Tuesday, February 11, 2020 - 10:50
in Biology & Nature
For the first time, a team of marine biology and environmental genomics researchers at NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) and KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) have demonstrated that epigenetic modifications in reef-building corals can be transmitted from parents to their offspring. This discovery, reported in a new study in the journal Nature Climate Change, not only enhances the biological understanding of corals, it also opens up new approaches to stem the loss of this foundation species of marine ecosystems. The findings suggest that generating pre-adapted coral colonies and larvae via epigenetic conditioning would enable the creation of seeding populations that can naturally repopulate dying reefs.