Biomimetic chemical microhabitats enhance coral settlement
Anthropogenic stressors pose substantial threats to the existence of coral reefs. Achieving successful coral recruitment stands as a bottleneck in reef restoration and hybrid reef engineering efforts. Here, we enhance coral settlement through the development of biomimetic microhabitats that replicate the chemical landscape of healthy reefs. We engineered a soft biomaterial, SNAP-X, comprising silica nanoparticles (NPs), biopolymers, and algal exometabolites, to enrich reef microhabitats with bioactive molecules from crustose coralline algae (CCA). Coral settlement was enhanced over 20-fold using SNAP-X-coated substrates compared with uncoated controls. SNAP-X is designed to release chemical signals slowly (>1 month) under natural seawater conditions, and can be rapidly applied to natural reef substrates via photopolymerization, facilitating the light-assisted 3D printing of microengineered habitats. We anticipate that these biomimetic chemical microhabitats will be widely used to augment coral settlement on degraded reefs and to support ecosystem processes on hybrid reefs.
Authors
- Shaochen Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6876-497X)
- Zachary A. Quinlan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0351-8927)
- Daniel Wangpraseurt (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4834-8981)
- Linda Wegley Kelly (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9157-4426)
- Souma Kundu
- Joshua R. Hancock (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4814-1385)
- Crawford Drury (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8853-416X)
- Luisa De Cola (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2152-6517)
- J. Chen
- Hendrikje Jorissen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5715-3281)
- Natalie Levy (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3890-9271)
- Helena F. Willard (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1656-230X)
- Zahra Karimi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9903-7791)
- Simone Potenti
- Timothy Noritake
Institutions
- Scripps Institution of Oceanography (US)
- University of San Diego (US)
- University of Milan (IT)
- University of California San Diego (US)
- University of Amsterdam (NL)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Trends in biotechnology
- Published
- 2025-05-14
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibtech.2025.03.019
- Citations
- 3
- Primary Topic
- Coral and Marine Ecosystems Studies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 5.15
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Defense
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
- University of California, San Diego
- Advanced Research Projects Agency
- Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, Harvard University
- Division of Materials Research
- Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, University of California, San Diego