What was achieved in 2025?

The team applied their high-throughput probiotics discovery platform to develop treatments for Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD)—the deadliest coral disease on record, affecting approximately two dozen species—at two new international sites: San Andrés, Colombia, in collaboration with ECOMARES, and Montserrat, in partnership with Island Solutions. They tested various delivery methods to optimize field application, including whole-colony bagging and hydrogels for topical application, conducting trials in both land-based nurseries and directly in the field. This work builds on their successful development of probiotics for coral restoration practitioners in Florida, expanding the geographic reach and practical implementation of these interventions.

What’s Next?

The platform continues expanding to new partners, species, and disease challenges. The team is developing probiotic treatments for corals in the Dominican Republic in partnership with FUNDEMAR. In a significant expansion beyond corals, the probiotics discovery platform is now being applied to sunflower sea stars, in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy, to identify and deliver microbial cocktails that prevent sea star wasting disease in captive breeding programs. This demonstrates how the screening system can be adapted to address disease threats across marine taxa, offering a replicable model for developing targeted probiotic interventions against emerging marine diseases worldwide.

What was achieved in 2025?

The first project funded through the Stem Cell Technologies Program, the Poo Zoo, was collaboratively developed by Revive & Restore, Oxford University, and Chester Zoo. This ambitious project is building a pipeline to derive viable primary cell lines from scat – both fresh and aged – enabling non-invasive cell cultures for many species. One year in, the team has successfully extracted cells for more than 10 species, including one avian species and several endangered mammals. Preserving living cells is essential for conservation, but normally requires tissue biopsies that severely limit sampling. Open source protocols to derive cells from scat will be a game-changer for biobanking efforts worldwide, enabling non-invasive sampling of far more individuals to preserve genetic diversity and potentially sample rare, elusive wild species.

What’s Next?

Phase 2 of the Poo Zoo will focus on reprogramming cells derived from scat into pluripotent stem cells, which have the capacity to become any other cell type. This advancement will dramatically expand conservation applications, providing researchers and wildlife managers with unprecedented capabilities for genetic rescue, assisted reproduction, and cellular models to study species’ responses to environmental challenges, without the need for invasive sampling procedures.

What was achieved in 2025?

The team developed a high-throughput genetic screening platform to rapidly test which genes affect coral health and their crucial partnership with algae. Testing 58 genes, they identified 11 with clear impacts on this symbiotic relationship, including the discovery that specific cellular proteins play a central role in maintaining the thriving partnership between corals and their algae partners. They also achieved a world first by pioneering year-round spawning of Galaxea corals in the lab, enabling them to grow the world’s first genetically modified coral line. Importantly, they identified HSF1 as a key gene contributing to heat tolerance differences between coral species—the first time scientists have pinpointed specific genes responsible for why some corals survive heat stress better than others.

What’s Next?

With their genetically modified Galaxea coral line established, the team is ready to add or remove key genes discovered through this work using CRISPR. They will expand their screening platform to test genes that either trigger bleaching or protect against it. Working with reef restoration practitioners, they will also test whether HSF1 can serve as a biomarker to identify heat-tolerant corals across different species quickly. This work will help practitioners select naturally resilient corals for restoration efforts and guide future strategies for enhancing coral survival as oceans warm.

What was achieved in 2025?

As the first team to identify and isolate stem cells from corals, the researchers made critical advances in coral stem cell biology and transplantation techniques. They successfully demonstrated stem cell transplantation between individual corals and identified potential benefits for stressed animals. Through systematic testing, they optimized methods for growing and maintaining these stem cells in the lab. They also explored the possibility of deriving stem cells directly from coral larvae and conducted initial trials of transplanting these cells into adult corals. This promising approach reduces contamination and could streamline the process of transferring beneficial traits between individuals.

What’s Next?

The team is partnering with restoration organization Rescue a Reef on a large-scale test using coral genotypes commonly deployed to restore Florida’s reefs. They’ll transplant stem cells between endangered staghorn corals with known heat tolerance levels to determine if this technique can transfer heat resistance between individuals. They’ll continue refining methods for deriving stem cells from larvae and transplanting them into adults. This work establishes the foundation for genetic therapies that could transfer resilience traits between corals, providing critical groundwork for future coral biobanking and genetic engineering technologies that may become essential tools as reefs face increasing climate threats.

What was achieved in 2025?

Researchers successfully demonstrated a cutting-edge technique for genetic biocontrol that works in just one generation. To apply this technology to disease-carrying mosquitoes, the team first demonstrated proof of concept in fruit flies. The Toxic Male Technique works by genetically engineering male insects to produce toxic peptides in their reproductive fluid. When males mate with females, this fluid reduces the females’ lifespan, causing rapid population decline within a single generation. Unlike other proposed genetic biocontrol methods, such as gene drives, this approach delivers rapid results regardless of whether reproduction occurs, making it a powerful tool for quickly reducing target populations.

What’s Next?

Revive & Restore provided crucial seed funding to develop a proof-of-concept for this game-changing capability in invasive species management. Following computational modeling of the effects of this technology on invasive mosquito species, the team is now moving forward in the lab with Aedes aegypti, the mosquito species responsible for spreading diseases such as dengue fever, Zika, and chikungunya. Success with mosquitoes could provide communities with a rapid response tool against disease outbreaks. Beyond mosquitoes, this intra-generational genetic biocontrol approach could be applied to other invasive insect species, offering a new strategy for protecting ecosystems and human health from harmful organisms.