Quote:
Originally Posted by greengeco82
Do you care to elaborate? With complete respect, I have no idea what you are referring to.
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First, you're seeing if you can make your corals brighter. It takes corals awhile to make new or additional fluorescing proteins so they look brighter. Instead of running your experiment for just a few weeks I think you should consider running it for several months.
Maybe this will help clarify why corals make thier fluorescing protiens, there are at least 4 primary purposes.
1. Photoprotection When the light is too intense for the zooxanthellae the fluorescing oragnelles are placed above them shading them, reducing the amount of light they recieve. As the light levels increase the coral makes more proteins intensifying the colors.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../408850a0.html
https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/42...et_al_2006.pdf
2. Photoenhancement. If the light is not bright enough for the zooxantheallae to work at optimum photosynthetic effeceincy the fluorescing organelles are located behind them with respect to the light source so they receive increased light levels.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../408850a0.html
https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/42...et_al_2006.pdf
(With ULNS methods starving the corals makes them look brighter because the zooxanthellae numbers are restricted reducing thier brown componet to the corals coloration.)
3. As antioxidants. The fluorescing proteins are used to neutralize the free radicals caused by photosythesis.
https://www.researchgate.net/publica...s_Antioxidants
4. As an Immune response. Fluorescing proteins are used by the corals immune system to deal with parasites.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25470724...n_tab_contents