Galaxea — Preserving The Ocean, One Coral at a Time
As a child, I grew up watching every Disney movie I could, and one of my favourite movies was Finding Nemo. Why, you might ask? Well, I absolutely loved the colours throughout Nemo’s home, also known as the Great Barrier Reef, located in Australia. They were so vibrant and truly beautiful to look at, while also supporting various aquatic species. Naturally, as a curious child, I constantly looked at photos of coral reefs, and was constantly astonished by their beauty.
Coral reefs are hotspots of biodiversity, along with holding significant economic, ecological, and aesthetic importance. They support an abundance of aquatic species — Within the Great Barrier Reef, you could find 1,500 species of fish, 411 types of hard corals, 1/3 of the world’s soft corals, 134 species of sharks and rays, and six of the world’s seven species of threatened marine turtles. They provide us with coastal protection by providing the land with a “buffer” or “barrier”, which protects our coasts from waves, storms, and floods. Coral reefs can reduce wave energy by 97% and serve as a natural flood defence along nearly 71,000 km of coastlines worldwide. Nearly 200 million people depend on coral reefs to protect them from storm surges and waves. These beautiful structures can also be used in treatments for cardiovascular diseases, ulcers, leukemia, lymphoma, skin cancer, and many more that remain undiscovered. As a matter of fact, scientists have found more than 20,000 chemicals in coral reefs that are potentially useful as pharmaceuticals, and that list grows every year. We can’t forget the fact that corals account for around 50% of the oxygen that we breathe.
Currently, they face a global decline, due to climate change and human activity. This makes it urgent to understand their response to stress, including one of the most significant responses; coral bleaching.
Coral Bleaching
Coral bleaching is where the corals’ algal symbionts are lost, due to the corals’ expelling the algae that live inside their tissue, causing the coral to turn white. This occurs when corals are stressed by a change in environmental conditions. As mentioned, they react by expelling the symbiotic algae that live in their tissues and then turn completely white. The symbiotic algae, called zooxanthellae, are photosynthetic and provide their host coral with food in return for protection. Their presence gives the corals a distinctive brown hue, and fluorescent pigments produced by the host add vibrant colours that characterize corals.
Prolonged stressful environmental conditions cause a breakdown in this symbiotic relationship, first revealing the fluorescent pigments and then leaving the white calcium carbonate skeleton visible through the coral tissue. Bleached corals can no longer gain energy from photosynthesis, and if bleaching persists for an extended period, corals will starve and die. For those that survive, bleaching can deplete the corals’ energy resources to the extent that corals do not reproduce for one or two years. The threat to corals increases as the bleaching events become more frequent because they have no time to recover. Stress can be caused by unusually high or low sea temperatures; high or low light levels; and the presence of freshwater or pollutants. But the extent of coral bleaching depends on above-average temperatures, the duration of high water temperatures, the coral species in question and the environmental history of the reef where the corals are found.
Introducing, Galaxea
Galaxea is a moonshot with a mission of preserving the ocean, one coral at a time, starting with the Great Barrier Reef, located off the East coast of Queensland, Australia.
We’re focused on the Galaxea fascicularis species, which is also known as octopus coral and fluorescence grass coral, among other names. It can be commonly found on reef slopes.
Our process consists of 3 steps.
1. Coral Zygote Extraction.
2. Editing the HSF1 Gene.
3. Releasing the Coral Zygotes.
Coral Zygote Extraction
We’d start off by extracting coral zygotes from their habitat. Once or twice a year, fully developed corals produce an abundance of zygotes — The time of year depends on their location; Inshore reefs start spawning zygotes between 1–6 nights after the first full moon in October, while outer reefs spawn during November or December. We would collect these zygotes by using specially designed nets. The zygotes are trapped inside the net as they detached and make their way up to the water surface, and concentrate inside a bottle located at the top of the net. These nets are based on the net + concept created by Secore International.
Editing the HSF1 Gene
The HSF1 gene protein is also known as Heat Shock Transcription Factor 1, and is activated when cells are briefly exposed to temperatures above their normal growth temperature. Our goal is to disrupt an important region of the protein to allow for the coral zygotes to grow and prosper in increasingly warming ocean temperatures. To do so, mutations within the HSF1 gene have to be created. 2 sgRNAs are created; One targets exon 3, while the other targets exon 9. We focused on these 2 target sites to lower the chances of any off-target effects, avoid possible complications from the alternative transcription start sites, and be early enough in the coding sequence that frameshifts would be more likely to create nonfunctional products.
Releasing the Coral Zygotes
The third, and final, step is to release the coral zygotes back into the ocean. After effectively gene-editing the zygotes and monitoring them in a controlled setting for a short period of time, they can be reintroduced into the ocean. These zygotes that were collected have the ability to colonize. Therefore, once reintroduced, they’re referred to as planula. Planulae float in the ocean and settle on a substrate. Once they’ve settled, they begin to grow into a new colony, and will be able to prosper in a healthy manner.
Understanding HSF1
Heat Shock Transcription Factor 1 (HSF1), is a gene protein located in many eukaryotes. This gene protein is activated by stressors found in the external environment. These stressors activate HSF1, which binds to heat shock elements within the organism’s genes.
As of today, 50% of the Earth’s corals have died. If we don’t take action now, by 2050, 90% of the Earth’s corals would have died.
Coral reefs hold a larger impact than one would expect:
- They’re home to ~25% of all marine species; by protecting these species, all economic industries could remain stable.
- The Great Barrier Reef itself has a national economic value of $6.4 billion.
Here at Galaxia, we are committed to protecting our ocean ecosystems because of their importance in our future. Through the use of our gene editing solution, we envision a future where corals are able to thrive and co-exist with humans. Innovation is at the forefront of our mission because it is through unconventional ideas that we can gain success. With Galaxea, both aquatic species and humans will be able to prosper for years to come.
I hope you enjoyed this article, as much as I enjoyed writing it! Check out my amazing team members who helped make this possible: Yessica Behl and Ashna Nirula.
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