They are not super-corals genetically edited to repopulate the reef. However, the Acropora millepora described in PNAS last week are the first baby polyps ever CRISPRed in a lab, by a team involving Stanford University, UT-Austin and the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville. These uncontroversial organisms pave the way for future experiments to reveal the molecular basis of vulnerability to bleaching, the fatal loss of algal symbionts triggered by global warming. Most corals reproduce once or twice a year, ejecting huge quantities of sex cells resembling underwater snowflakes. The time window of these spawning events can be predicted quite accurately, so researchers can sample the reef at the right moment and collect early embryos for genetic manipulation. We discussed the experiment results and future perspectives of gene editing in corals with the paper’s first author Phil Cleves.

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