Deciphering the Genome Stability Maintenance Strategies of Reef Building Corals to Face Environmental Changes – CoralForce

Despite their ecological, economic and social importance, coral reefs are impacted by climate change, fragilizing the symbiotic corals and leading to coral bleaching. Nevertheless, not all coral species, nor even all individuals within species, have the same sensitivity to stress, thus unbalancing the coral biodiversity of reefs. Genome maintenance pathways (GMPs) are the main regulators of stress resistance in many organisms, however, close to nothing is known about GMPs in corals. Thus, the main objective of CORALFORCE is to decipher the contribution of GMPs to the resilience potential of corals facing environmental changes. Taking advantage of results of the consortium as well as of the unique set of coral samples and multiscale data of the Tara-Pacific expedition, we will combine large scale bio-informatics analysis, in vitro and in vivo experiments on heterologous models and field work to dissect the role of GMPs and explain the species/individual-specific tolerance to stress.