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.

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 ...

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.

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 ...