Multiple days of coral spawning in the lab is opening the door to further important research projects and contributions to mitigating the tropical coral crisis.

Three of our students were honored during KAUST's commencement ceremony!

Spanish newspaper "El Pais" publishes "The last refuge of corals in the Red Sea".

The selective breeding of thermally resistant corals together with other coral conservation approaches is being studied in the Red Sea by the Symbiomics Lab.

“This study proves the value of keeping an open mind when it comes to studying living creatures,” says Aranda. “Sometimes knowledge can put you in a box; if you analyze data using only what you think you know, you may well miss something"

Article on the research framework needed to mitigate the effects of climate change on corals.

Anthropogenic climate change and environmental deterioration are driving global degradation of coral reefs. This Review examines how the natural adaptive capacity of coral holobionts can be harnessed and expanded to counter ongoing coral loss.

Our current research was featured in Extreme E's new YouTube series (Ep 02). We describe the challenges Red Sea corals are facing due to climate change and explore how our research here at KAUST is contributing to the knowledge of coral resilience to increasing ocean temperatures.

Dinoflagellate endosymbionts of cauliflower coral The image shows a fluorescence microscopy close-up of polyps of the cauliflower coral Stylophora pistillata and their dinoflagellate endosymbionts. The coral host exhibits green fluorescence due to natural GFP expression, and the symbiotic Symbiodinium microadriaticum dinoflagellates are visible because of their red fluorescence from excited chlorophyll.

Aranda lab graduate Xin Wang identified that coral ancestors had the genetic toolkit to make skeletal structures and only took simple evolutionary steps to begin building reefs.

New publication from Aranda group about the weird and wonderful genome of dinoflagellates. It looks nothing like other eukaryotic genomes.

A new publication titled "Temperature transcends partner specificity in the symbiosis establishment of a cnidarian" was published in 'THE ISME Journal'. This was part of thesis work done by Marcela Herrera, a Ph.D student from our lab.

Click here to read !

​Our lab has just published a paper in Nature Climate Change, detailing the transmission of epigenetic information from corals to their progeny. This work, involving Yi Jin (co-first), Xin and Mani (sole PI), sequenced and analysed DNA methylation patterns from eight corals across three developmental stages.

Documentary "Climate change: Could Red Sea corals save the world’s reefs?" by Alexis Barbier-Bouvet and this team featuring our lab's research published on France24

Maha Cziesielski came to KAUST in 2014 as an intern in the Coral Symbiomics lab. During her internship she worked on the cnidarian symbiosis model system, the small sea anemone Aiptasia. Like corals, Aiptasia lives in symbiosis with the algae Symbiodiniaceae. She quickly developed an interest for the fine tuned and highly complex molecular mechanisms that underlie cnidarian symbiosis. Thus, she returned to KAUST in 2015 to begin her PhD studies.

The KAUST Research Conference: "Securing a Future for Red Sea Ecosystems" brings together experts from academia, industry and government to discuss the current state of research and to develop feasible strategies to improve current mitigation and restoration methods. This event aims to produce a set of targeted strategies that are sustainable, socioeconomically acceptable and aligned with public, academic, industry, and government interests.

Aranda Lab presents at the ALSO conference in Puerto Rico recent studies in epigenetics and assisted evolution.

It's a week of graduation celebrations at Aranda Lab !!. As many as five students graduated this year from our lab, successfully stepping into next stage of their career! Smiles all around :-)

Post-doctoral fellow Arun Prasanna and Prof. Manuel Aranda won research funding through “Competitive Research Grant (CRG)” starting 2019.

Thesis title: Unravelling the metabolic interactions of the Aiptasia-Symbiodiniaceae symbiosis.