Stem cell transplants could save the world's corals, say researchers

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Graphical abstract. Credit: Cell Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2024.114944

Climate change is bleaching and killing off vast amounts of the world's coral due to rising sea temperatures. Dr. Benyamin Rosental of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and his colleagues have proposed an out of the box potential solution: transplanting stem cells from resilient individuals to revive them.

In a new paper published recently in Cell Reports, Dr. Rosental and Shani Talice and the rest of his team have established for the first time the feasibility of transplanting stem cells into sea anemones, which are closely related to corals. They determined that stem cells from hexacorallia (Nematostella vectensis) did integrate, differentiate and proliferate in transplanted individuals.

Building on recent studies indicating that hexacorallia have stem cells, Dr. Rosental and his team developed a unique method to isolate and implant stem cells. Their isolation method is applicable to other fields as well.

Example of injection using blue food coloring. Credit: Cell Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2024.114944

"The basic idea is to develop cellular therapy for corals, along the lines of bone marrow transplantation in humans. In humans, we transplant bone marrow from a healthy individual to a recipient with severe immune deficiency in order to restore the immune system through the blood stem cells, which reside in the bone marrow. In corals, for instance, the idea would be to take stem cells from a heat resilient individual to a sensitive one to transfer resilience in the face of heat waves," explains Dr. Rosental.

Dr. Rosental is a member of The Shraga Segal Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Genetics in the Faculty of Health Sciences and the Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cells at BGU. He collaborated with researchers from the University of Miami, Stanford University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Researchers from BGU's Goldman Sonnenfeldt School of Sustainability and Climate Change also took part.

More information: Shani Talice et al, Candidate stem cell isolation and transplantation in Hexacorallia, Cell Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2024.114944

Journal information: Cell Reports

Provided by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev