Researchers set out to catalog the molecular makeup of coral reef ecosystems as part of the National Geographic Society's Pristine Seas project. The underlying goal of this project is to better understand the dynamics of healthy ocean ecosystems.
"Our oceans are rapidly declining and we need to understand what's normal before there's no 'normal' left," said the study's lead author, Rob Quinn, assistant project scientist at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. "We need to find out what healthy reefs look like so we can identify those transitioning to unhealthy."
While working as a postdoctoral researcher at San Diego State University, Quinn, along with SDSU biology professor Forest Rohwer, Mark Vermeij of the Caribbean Research and Management of Biodiversity foundation, and other colleagues, analyzed coral tissue samples that had been collected from coral reefs off the Southern Line Islands in the central Pacific Ocean, about 2000 km south of Hawaii. These coral reefs are considered among the most remote and pristine reef systems in the world.
Quinn analyzed the molecular contents of the tissue samples with a technique called mass spectrometry, which uses coordinated ion beams to sort out the individual molecules present. Looking at the readout, one molecule in particular stood out to him: platelet activating factor, or PAF.
"It was basically the most abundant molecule we detected in coral," Quinn said.
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