ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2004
Membrane lipids of symbiotic algae are diagnostic of sensitivity to thermal bleaching in corals.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2004. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 136 papers.
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Who cites it
136 citing papers in PubMed, 672 citations in OpenAlex.
- Advancing Symbiodiniaceae Functional Ecology Through a Trait-Based Framework.Ecology and evolution · 2026Review
- Heat-evolved coral photosymbionts exhibit dampened stress responses across distinct physiological contexts.The New phytologist · 2026Article
- Extracellular superoxide production byPNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Differential Responses to Heat Stress Between Freshly Isolated and Long-Term CulturedMicroorganisms · 2026Article
- Can Bacterial Manipulation Deliver Reef-Scale Thermal Enhancement of Corals?Microorganisms · 2026Review
- Oxylipin-mediated metabolic signatures of symbiosis homeostasis and thermal stress in a model sea anemone.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Convergent symbioses: morphology, life history, and niche specialization in coral and lichen mutualisms.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2026Review
- Intergenerational metabolomic signatures of bleaching resistance in corals.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Moderate levels of dissolved iron stimulate cellular growth and increase lipid storage in Symbiodinium sp.Journal of phycology · 2025Article
- Distinct transcriptomic strategies underlie differential heat tolerance in Symbiodiniaceae symbionts.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Elaborating the molecular characteristics of corals' different tolerance to environmental stress in Sanya Luhuitou based on multi-omics analysis.Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- A photophysiological model of coral bleaching under light and temperature stress: experimental assessment.Conservation physiology · 2025Article
- Photosynthetic dependence and filament production in physical bacterial-Symbiodiniaceae interactions.ISME communications · 2025Article
- Unique photosynthetic strategies employed by closely related Breviolum minutum strains under rapid short-term cumulative heat stress.Journal of experimental botany · 2024Article
- Seasonal Proteome Variations inProteomes · 2024Article
- Macroalgae farming for sustainable future: Navigating opportunities and driving innovation.Heliyon · 2024Review
- Article
- Coral Lipids.Marine drugs · 2023Review
- Article
- Genomic exploration of coral-associated bacteria: identifying probiotic candidates to increase coral bleaching resilience in Galaxea fascicularis.Microbiome · 2023Article
76 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Over the past three decades, massive bleaching events of zooxanthellate corals have been documented across the range of global distribution. Although the phenomenon is correlated with relatively small increases in sea-surface temperature and enhanced light intensity, the underlying physiological mechanism remains unknown. In this article we demonstrate that thylakoid membrane lipid composition is a key determinate of thermal-stress sensitivity in symbiotic algae of cnidarians. Analyses of thylakoid membranes reveal that the critical threshold temperature separating thermally tolerant from sensitive species of zooxanthellae is determined by the saturation of the lipids. The lipid composition is potentially diagnostic of the differential nature of thermally induced bleaching found in scleractinian corals. Measurements of variable chlorophyll fluorescence kinetic transients indicate that thermally damaged membranes are energetically uncoupled but remain capable of splitting water. Consequently, a fraction of the photosynthetically produced oxygen is reduced by photosystem I through the Mehler reaction to form reactive oxygen species, which rapidly accumulate at high irradiance levels and trigger death and expulsion of the endosymbiotic algae. Differential sensitivity to thermal stress among the various species of Symbiodinium seems to be distributed across all clades. A clocked molecular phylogenetic analysis suggests that the evolutionary history of symbiotic algae in cnidarians selected for a reduced tolerance to elevated temperatures in the latter portion of the Cenozoic.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.