Using Direct Microbiome Manipulation to Understand Causal Roles of Microbes in the Health and Stress Resistance of Corals

Microbiome-based interventions have been successfully applied in clinical and in food production applications, ranging from treatment of human disease to increasing crop productivity and stress tolerance. Most recently, interventions using microbiome manipulation have been suggested as a solution to mitigate environmental pollution issues, to help rehabilitate ecosystem functions, and to counteract biodiversity loss. In terrestrial ecosystems, first emerging microbiome-based strategies are underway to solve ecosystem disruption or to rescue endangered species. In the oceans, such strategies could effectively help augment corals to endure the consequences of ocean warming and, thereby become a vital part of meaningful management solutions to retain coral reef ecosystems. Importantly, a thorough understanding of microbiome functioning will be the centrepiece of successful microbiome-based interventions. Reef-building corals are complex holobionts that consist of the animal host, intracellular algal symbionts, and a diverse suite of prokaryotic (bacteria, archaea) and micro-eukaryotic (fungi, protists) symbionts. While our understanding of the diversity and dynamics of the bacterial community in health, stress, and disease has been steadily increasing in recent decades, we have barely scraped the surface of inter-kingdom interactions within the complex coral microbiome and other reef organisms, and this continues to be a bottleneck in developing effective mitigation strategies to protect coral reefs.



With this Frontiers Research Topic, we intend to stimulate efforts in coral microbiome research to make use of microbiome manipulation experiments. Coupled with physiological and genomic assessments, microbiome manipulation promises to advance our knowledge of coral microbiome functioning and at the same time foster the developments of potential microbiome-based tools for the rescue of corals and their ecosystem.



With the aid of molecular biology, microbiology and bioinformatics, this Research Topic intends to study the functions of the coral microbiome in context of benefits to the coral host. It requires original and novel research focused on identifying functional role of coral microbiome members. Specific themes that can be addressed in this topic:

1. Coral microbiome with emphasis on functional roles.

2. Microbiome manipulation experiments in response to external stress

3. Meta-omics of coral tissue and skeleton microbiome