Australia corals to light up cancer cure fight
SYDNEY, Aug 14 AFP Australian scientists have discovered a cluster of
brilliant shallow-water corals that could help in the search for
anti-cancer drugs and to understand global warming, a researcher said
Saturday.
The vividly fluorescent cluster was found in waters off Lord Howe
Island, 600 kilometres (400 miles) east of the Australian mainland, with
some displaying rich reds that were difficult to find and in high demand
for studies of cancer cells, researcher Anya Salih said.
“The underwater buttresses and caverns are densely inhabited by
hundreds of corals, all deeply pigmented by the most intense green, blue
and many with red fluorescence,” she said.
Salih said she had never seen such an abundance of highly red
fluorescent corals, nor such an extraordinarily vibrant site.“We are
using these pigments to light up the workings of living cells and to
study what goes wrong in cancer cells,” said Salih, from the University
of Western Sydney.
The gene producing the particular pigment red, green, blue or yellow
would be attached to a molecule in both healthy and cancerous cells, and
would enable scientists to track cell growth and change using a special
fluorescent-sensitive laser microscope.Salih is working with scientists
from the University of California to explore how cancer cells differ
from normal cells and how effective anti-cancer drugs are.
She said red pigments were especially valuable because they allowed
researchers to see deeper into tissues. “These fluorescent molecules are
transforming cell science and biomedical research,” said Salih.
The corals were discovered by scientists tracking the recovery of
coral bleaching linked to global warming at Lord Howe Island, and Salih
said they were invaluable not only for her research but for
understanding climate change.“Earlier this year, the coral reefs of Lord
Howe Island experienced a sudden mass bleaching event caused by warming
of seawater. It’s a sign that global warming is beginning to be a threat
to coral survival even to the most southern reefs in Australia,” she
said.
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