The great star corals of the sick grip are preserved in probiotics – they can trigger beneficial bacteria that attack or move invading pathogens, or immune responses against them.
The cause of this fatal disease remains unknown. However, researchers at the Smithsonian Marine Corps Station in Fort Pierce, Florida, were able to succeed. Stops progression of disease symptomsthe team will report June 5th Frontiers of marine science.
This condition is called coral tissue loss disease in stones and is characterized by covering a white lesion that leads to polyp loss, a small, softened organism that resembles sea ammones – corals. In the end, nothing remains except for the white coral skeleton. The disease appeared in Florida in 2014, spreading ramps in the Florida Key and the Caribbean.
Researchers suspect the disease is essentially a bacterial. Antibiotic treatment Although it can provide rapid fixes, these drugs prevent reinfection and do not pose a risk of constructing resistance to mystical pathogens against them. So, in the second half of 2020, the Smithsonian Group attempted a more sustainable solution, giving probiotics to coral colonies on 30 infected stars.
The useful microorganisms came from lab-tested corals that showed resistance to disease. “We realized that one of the coral fragments didn’t get infected, so one of the first things we did was try to culture the microorganisms found in this coral,” says Blake Ushijima, a microbiologist who developed the probiotics used in the team’s experiments. “These microorganisms produced antibacterial compounds and had high levels of activity against bacteria from diseased corals.”
Identified microorganisms, a A bacteria called MCH1-7It has become the active ingredient in pastes delivered by divers to numerous infected colonies. They covered plastic bags to soak these colonies in the probiotic solution and injected the paste into the bag using a syringe. They also applied the paste directly to other colonies, slathing lesions caused by the disease.
For two and a half years, the team monitored the health of the corals. Probiotics slowed or stopped the spread of the disease to all eight colonies treated in the bag. On average, advances in this disease were retained in only 7% of tissues, compared to the aggressive 30% of untreated colonies. Paste placed directly on the coral had no beneficial effects.
The outcome is encouraging, but co-author Valerie Paul warns against declaring probiotic treatments. She is swimming in a heavy plastic bag and doubts the practicality of placing it on a coral. And she points out that when the disease is plagued by more than 30, the study was limited to one species of coral.
Nevertheless, Matsushima considers this research to be a proof of concept. “The idea of ​​coral probiotics has been thrown at me for decades, but it has not directly shown an impact on wild disease,” he says. “It’s actually opening the door to a new field, so I think it’s very exciting.”
