Coral Lipidomes and Their Changes during Coral Bleaching

Abstract

Numerous species of coral polyps form the structural basis of tropical coral reefs. Coral polyp tissues are rich in lipids. Currently, information on the composition of fatty acids and classes of coral lipid is reviewed. However, each lipid class represents a complex spectrum of molecular species of lipids, which is defined as the lipidome of a biological system. Scientific publications on human and higher terrestrial animal lipidomes exceed those on the lipidome of marine organisms by two orders of magnitude, and the data on coral lipidomes are very scattered. The existence of symbiotic coral species is completely dependent on the presence of intracellular microalgae (zooxanthellae), the loss of which is called coral bleaching and leads to the death of the entire coral reef. The bleaching causes significant changes in the lipid profile of corals. This paper summarizes information on the composition of common lipids, fatty acids, and molecules of polar and nonpolar lipid classes of octocoral and hexacoral polyps and their symbionts. We discuss general mechanisms of coral bleaching and show the importance of lipid indicators in the study of this process. The transition from classical integral indicators to the lipidomic analysis opens up new possibilities in the study of biochemistry and ecology of corals.