The Global Phosphorylation Landscape of Acute Heat Stress in Reef-Building Corals

Acute heat stress in three reef-building corals rapidly activates ERK, JNK, and p38 MAP kinases, while suppressing cell cycle signaling and remodeling chromatin, RNA, and metabolism pathways.

• Why it matters: Warming oceans disrupt coral-algal symbiosis, but the signaling events that initiate bleaching are not well defined, limiting targeted resilience strategies.
• What they did: The study integrated global phosphoproteomics across three reef-building corals with protein structure modeling to infer coral kinase activities and map a shared heat-stress signaling program.
• The result: Thermal stress rewired immune receptor signaling networks linked to non-self recognition, implying heat shifts the coral host from tolerance toward immune recognition of its algal symbionts.

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