Somatic tissues of the coral <i>Galaxea fascicularis</i> possess telomerase activity

Abstract

Some coral species have extremely long life spans. Many corals have the capacity to regenerate from fragments or pieces of tissue; thus, they rely, at least in part, on asexual reproduction for the maintenance of their populations. As a first step in understanding the mechanism underlying the long life span of corals and their possible rejuvenation during asexual reproduction, we studied whether the somatic tissues of the coral Galaxea fas cicularis had telomerase activity. We quantified the level of telomerase activity in various parts of polyps using stretch PCR. The outer and inner wall tissues of the polyps showed similar levels of telomerase activity, which were comparable with that of HeLa cells, on a unit protein basis. Because the outer wall tissue does not contain gonads, it is suggested that somatic tissues of the coral possesses telomerase activity. Telomerase activity was detected throughout the year in the polyps, regardless of the gonad maturation stage. This study reports that the somatic tissue of the coral has telomerase activity.

Do reef corals age?

“…However, in another species, Galaxea fascicularis, no significant differences were found (Tsuta & Hidaka, 2013). Tsuta et al (2014) proposed that this may be explained by G. fascicularis having a longer lifespan, perhaps associated with a low rate of telomere change due to the high levels of telomerase activity noted in adults (Nakamichi et al, 2012).…”

“…Several preliminary studies describe telomere characteristics in corals (Sinclair, Richmond & Ostrander, 2007;Zielke & Bodnar, 2010;Nakamichi et al, 2012) (Table 2). For the short-lived branching coral Acropora digitifera telomere length was significantly longer in sperm than in the planulae which was in turn longer than in adult polyps (Tsuta et al, 2014).…”