Small tools for big questions- How microsensors help us understand corals

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•  Duygu Sevilgen and Dirk DeBeer
• Friday 23 May 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Zoom or in-person at Sainsbury Laboratory, 47 Bateman St, Cambridge CB2 1LR.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Emilio Aldorino.

The backbone of our world’s coral reef ecosystems is shaped by countless colonies of stony corals that produce calcium carbonate skeletons in a process called biomineralisation. The underlying mechanisms of this process however are still not fully understood. This is striking, given that coral reefs are strongly affected by environmental changes such as ocean acidification or increases of sea surface temperatures. In this context, understanding coral responses to environmental threats by understanding their physiology and deciphering the process of biomineralisation has become an increasingly important research task. Various indirect and direct methods are available to study biomineralisation processes. While many insights are derived from measurements on dead coral skeleton, electrochemical microsensors (EM) offer a tool to study live animals to tackle the task and add a puzzle piece of understanding. EM are very fine, minimally invasive, needle-shaped and often home-made instruments that allow for real time measurements of a large range of analytes on high spatial (µm) and temporal (ms) resolution. They can be used to characterize the oxygen environment (dissolved oxygen concentrations and dynamics, photosynthesis- and respiration rates) and to measure key parameters that are important during biomineralization (pH, [Ca2+], [CO32-]). This talk will give an overview of to corals, coral reef ecosystems and the threats they are facing and will then explore how microsensors help to study them.

This talk is part of the Branching Out Talk Series series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Branching Out Talk Series
• Zoom or in-person at Sainsbury Laboratory, 47 Bateman St, Cambridge CB2 1LR

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