Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Kāne'ohe, HI, 96744, United States.
Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, United States.
Sci Rep. 2017 Nov 6;7(1):14596. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-15084-3.
As disease spreads through living coral, it can induce changes in the distribution of coral's naturally fluorescent pigments, making fluorescence a potentially powerful non-invasive intrinsic marker of coral disease. Here, we show the usefulness of live-imaging laser scanning confocal microscopy to investigate coral health state. We demonstrate that the Hawaiian coral Montipora capitata consistently emits cyan and red fluorescence across a depth gradient in reef habitats, but the micro-scale spatial distribution of those pigments differ between healthy coral and coral affected by a tissue loss disease. Naturally diseased and laboratory infected coral systematically exhibited fragmented fluorescent pigments adjacent to the disease front as indicated by several measures of landscape structure (e.g., number of patches) relative to healthy coral. Histology results supported these findings. Pigment fragmentation indicates a disruption in coral tissue that likely impedes translocation of energy within a colony. The area of fragmented fluorescent pigments in diseased coral extended 3.03 mm ± 1.80 mm adjacent to the disease front, indicating pathogenesis was highly localized rather than systemic. Our study demonstrates that coral fluorescence can be used as a proxy for coral health state, and, such patterns may help refine hypotheses about modes of pathogenesis.
随着疾病在活体珊瑚中传播，它会引起珊瑚天然荧光色素分布的变化，使荧光成为一种潜在的强大的非侵入性珊瑚疾病内在标志物。在这里，我们展示了使用活细胞成像激光扫描共聚焦显微镜来研究珊瑚健康状况的有效性。我们证明，夏威夷珊瑚 Montipora capitata 在珊瑚礁栖息地的深度梯度上始终发出青色和红色荧光，但这些色素的微观空间分布在健康珊瑚和受组织损失疾病影响的珊瑚之间存在差异。天然患病珊瑚和实验室感染珊瑚系统地表现出与健康珊瑚相比，在疾病前沿附近有荧光色素的碎片（例如，斑块数量）。组织学结果支持了这些发现。色素碎片表明珊瑚组织受到破坏，这可能阻碍了能量在群体内的转移。患病珊瑚中碎片化荧光色素的面积在疾病前沿附近延伸了 3.03 毫米±1.80 毫米，表明发病机制高度局限而不是全身性的。我们的研究表明，珊瑚荧光可以作为珊瑚健康状况的替代指标，这种模式可能有助于完善关于发病机制模式的假设。
