Scientists have seen stony coral cells engulf dinoflagellates - single-celled, photosynthetic algae that are crucial for keeping coral alive. The researchers cultured endoderm-like cells from the ...

Corals are actually a symbiotic assembly of itself and these microscopic dinoflagellate algae–the dinoflagellates help corals attain nutrition, which in turn fuels the growth of coral reefs.

A coral of the type studied by scientists at Rice University is protected by dinoflagellates (inset), algae that turn sunlight into food to feed and protect reefs.

Dinoflagellates are single-celled organisms in coral reefs, and create bioluminescence themselves. In nature, dinoflagellates’ bioluminescence activates when they are agitated; they give off a ...

But this architecture is only possible because of a mutually beneficial relationship between the coral and various species of single-celled algae called dinoflagellates that live inside individual ...

Highly organised gene patterns and rod-shaped chromosomes set the genome of one species of dinoflagellates apart from other eukaryotes. “The genome for S. microadriaticum had already been sequenced ...

that live inside them – a relationship that has driven the success of coral reefs for hundreds of millions of years. As temperatures rise, the dinoflagellates are damaged and are discarded ...