Under the right living arrangement, disease-resistant corals can help “rescue” corals that are more vulnerable to disease, found a study from the University of California, Davis, that monitored a disease outbreak at a coral nursery in Little Cayman, Cayman Islands.
Genetics, climate change, and conservation become highly intertwined in Dr. Andrew Whitehead’s lab. Although he works on a variety of research endeavors, he mainly focuses on how wild species respond to human-induced stress, such as the effects of climate change, and how that may affect an individual organism’s progeny. Essentially, Dr. Whitehead attempts to monitor how climate change and pollution will shape the genetic makeup of multiple generations.
The Cherr Lab has been working on defensins in reproductive biology. Defensins (including ß-defensins) are part of the innate immune system that is understood to be the key defense against disease in invertebrates; homologous peptides exist in invertebrates as “antimicrobial peptides”.
