Bioinformatics of Corals: Investigating Heterogeneous Omics Data from Coral Holobionts for Insight into Reef Health and Resilience

Annu Rev Biomed Data Sci. 2022 Aug 10:5:205-231. doi: 10.1146/annurev-biodatasci-122120-030732. Epub 2022 May 10.

Abstract

Coral reefs are home to over two million species and provide habitat for roughly 25% of all marine animals, but they are being severely threatened by pollution and climate change. A large amount of genomic, transcriptomic, and other omics data is becoming increasingly available from different species of reef-building corals, the unicellular dinoflagellates, and the coral microbiome (bacteria, archaea, viruses, fungi, etc.). Such new data present an opportunity for bioinformatics researchers and computational biologists to contribute to a timely, compelling, and urgent investigation of critical factors that influence reef health and resilience.

Keywords: biomineralization; coral bleaching; holobiont; microbiome; multiomics; remote homology; resilience; scleractinian; symbiosis; transcriptomics.

Publication types

  • Review
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Anthozoa* / genetics
  • Computational Biology
  • Coral Reefs
  • Microbiota* / genetics
  • Symbiosis / genetics