CAREER: Identifying Material Properties to Accelerate Coral Cell Growth

Non-technical summary Coral reefs are essential to US economic prosperity, with NOAA estimating that these reefs provide the US over $3 billion per year by providing essential food (fisheries), tourism, and coastal protection, ultimately impacting millions of people. Unfortunately, the health of these reefs has declined dramatically over time, creating devastating impacts on our ocean ecosystems and our economy. Current strategies do not grow corals fast and strong enough to keep up with this dramatic decline, motivating the need to develop new biotechnologies to accelerate coral growth. Fortunately, coral skeletons are very similar to human bones, and there already exists a breadth of knowledge and history in developing biomaterials to accelerate human bone repair, but this knowledge has yet to be applied to corals. Material properties, such as how porous a material is, how stiff a material is, and even what the material is made of (plastic or metal), can influence how cells grow and how skeletons form. Using what is known about developing materials to repair human bones, the goal of this project is to create new coral growth-enhancing biotechnologies by engineering biomaterials to help coral reefs grow stronger and faster. This new biotechnology would then be used to combat the decline in coral reefs and, in the future, could be implemented in the ocean to restore and repopulate our ocean ecosystems. Along with this research, an educational plan has been designed to increase US workforce development that integrates art and science to enable broader participation in science by students, teachers, and the public by making science more accessible and understandable. Accomplishing this proposal will ultimately create new biotechnologies to repair our devastated coral reefs, to increase US economic prosperity by increasing food production and coastal community protection. Technical summary Coral reefs have declined by over 50% since 1950, resulting in a dramatic ecosystem upset and loss of over 60% yield from fish catches alone, impacting the livelihoods of nearly 6 million people worldwide and millions within the US. This CAREER proposal introduces a transformative interdisciplinary biotechnology approach that bridges materials science and coral cell culture—two fields with untapped collaborative potential—to identify the chemical, mechanical, and topological properties that optimize coral cell attachment and accelerate cell growth. Through a comprehensive investigation of materials never previously explored for their interaction with coral cells, this research aims to develop next-generation substrates that can significantly enhance reef restoration speed and success. The central hypothesis is that coral cells will attach and grow faster on materials mimicking the natural properties of coral, such as pore size and pore shape, stiffness, and composition. This principle aligns with the major breakthroughs in biotechnology development to advance human tissue repair, but one that has never been explored for coral applications. This will be accomplished by (1) identifying the chemical cues provided by growth substrates (e.g., natural vs. synthetic polymers) that influence coral cell activity and the methods by which coral cells attach to materials, (2) quantifying the role of substrate stiffness on coral cell attachment, and (3) optimizing surface topology (pore size and shape) to accelerate coral cell growth and attachment. The integration of these thrusts will be guided by our advanced understanding of analogous interactions in mammalian bone and ultimately provide a comprehensive framework to advance our understanding of coral. The integrated education plan in this proposal emphasizes developing an innovative scientific US workforce of students skilled in cutting-edge research, and inspiring broader participation in science by intersecting art and science to make science more accessible for all. This comprehensive research a NSF Award ID: 2541817 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT,01002930DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT,01003031DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Marley Dewey | Institution: University of California-Santa Barbara, SANTA BARBARA, CA | Award Amount: $430,420 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2541817 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2541817.html