“Corals are truly wondrous organisms!” Despite the late hour and the capriciousness of the Skype line, the enthusiasm and delight in Christian Voolstra’s voice is infectious. Calling from California, Dr. Voolstra, an evolutionary biologist from Germany has no doubt that “If you want to do marine genomics, KAUST is definitely one of the best places in the world.”

Dr. Voolstra is an Assistant Professor at the Red Sea Research Center headed by James Luyten, Professor of Marine Science at KAUST and Director Emeritus of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Marine researchers at KAUST enjoy a campus of which over half (19.6km2) is marine habitat.

Researchers take advantage of access to the longest reef in the world in a sea the size of Iraq with an unprecedented diversity of marine species. In stark contrast to many other coral reefs, this Saudi Arabian ecosystem has been almost unaffected by tourism. “The 20km stretch of reef at the Gulf of Aqaba, for example, is subject to more than 250,000 dives annually”.

In a nutshell, reef corals are animals that live in a mutualistic relationship with photosynthetic algae. They use carbon, fixed by their algal symbiont for calcification and to meet their daily metabolic needs. Without the colorful algae, corals become pale or ‘bleached’. Prolonged bleaching can lead to coral death, which in turn affects many other marine species, for example the many fish that use coral reefs as a nursery.

Recently a team of international scientists used a process very similar to tree ringing, taking samples from stony, reef building Red Sea corals and looking carefully at how growth correlates with temperature in a study funded and facilitated by KAUST.

In a paper published in Science, the researchers were able to show the effect of climate change on corals from reefs in the central Red Sea and warn of further deterioration within this century without immediate, aggressive global intervention to reduce carbon emissions. Dr Voolstra has recently been awarded a Global Collaborative Research Academic Excellence Alliance (AEA) grant by KAUST of about 500,000 dollars over two years in order to sequence the genome of an algal coral symbiont.

This research is particularly exciting because it represents the first effort to sequence a dinoflagellate genome. Dinoflagellates are known to possess huge genomes despite being single-celled eukaryotes. Quite apart from helping to understand the mutually beneficial relationship (symbiosis) between algae and corals, the genome sequence could also help to study the evolutionary transition from mutualism to parasitism. The phylogenetic sister group of dinoflagellates, the apicomplexans, are exclusively parasitic and best known for being animal parasites. Comparison of the gene repertoires and the adaptations that have taken place in these lineages might significantly contribute to our understanding of parasitic-related diseases such as e.g. malaria. Malaria causes 2.7 million deaths annually worldwide.

The award serves to complement the efforts of sequencing the genome of the coral host led by Dr. Voolstra and Dr. Timothy Ravasi, Associate Professor of Biology. Dr. Voolstra cites this AEA award as one example of the inter- institutional collaborations encouraged by KAUST that allow researchers to share ideas and guard against isolation, and praises the interdisciplinary agility facilitated by the research center system that helps to speed up the rate of scientific discovery.

Dr. Voolstra’s recent announcement of the genome sequencing of an algal symbiont caused an immediate response when it went into the public domain on “Coral List”, an open source initiative pertaining to coral reef ecosystem research, conservation, and education, of which he is an active proponent.

Using the untapped resource of the fragile and beautiful Red Sea reefs, Dr. Voolstra sees its preservation as paramount, but it is evident that his research could have significant implications for human health. One application is “blue” biotechnology: the characterization of yet to be identified microbial organisms that live in coral reefs and that display antibacterial or antiviral activity. Similarly, the more familiar forest biotechnology has given cancer sufferers hope in the drug Taxol.

One day soon, working with colleagues from the immersive visualization core facility, he hopes to “swim” in a 3D virtual reconstruction of the coral reef in CORNEA, a specific example of the cross-disciplinary projects that the KAUST model aims to promote.