How Symbiodiniaceae meets the challenges of life during coral bleaching

Coral health depends on a fragile partnership between the coral hosts and the endosymbiotic dinoflagellate symbionts. Sequence-level omics techniques are revolutionizing many aspects of the existing cellular studies, shedding light on the mechanisms enabling the establishment, maintenance, and breakdown of the obligate endosymbiosis. In this review, drawing lessons from the molecular investigations of the algal symbionts, we see that genomics and transcriptomics have provided crucial leads and basic understanding toward the function and dysfunction of the symbiosis. Proteomics and metabolomics are now complementing the omics at DNA and RNA levels and bringing new insights into the intrinsic processes of the holobionts. We anticipate that a new era of systems biology is approaching where together with the development of the synthetic biology, omics-driven functional genomics would greatly facilitate the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of the mutualistic partners.