You can read my thesis!
At the beginning of January, 2016, I handed in my PhD thesis. In May it was accepted with revisions (I wish I could say "minor revisions" but hey - I didn't have to go and do more experimental work so that was a distinct bonus right?). And then in January 2017, I got the final version bound and handed in to the grad school.
Winner.
And now, it's up on the UTS library website for anyone to go and read! That includes you!
In plain English, it was all about climate change and what's happening to corals as the water heats up. In as few words as possible... it's not good. It's fair to say that many, many researchers before me have looked at this topic and come to the same conclusion. What was special about my research was that I used Chemistry - a particular branch of chemistry called "metabolomics".
Metabolomics is the study of various nutritional compounds (like carbohydrates, proteins and fats) and what happens to them in an organism. We generally use light-based (eg. FTIR spectroscopy) or chromatographic (eg. GC-MS) techniques to map where they go, what concentrations they're in and how they change under different conditions.
I specifically looked at a tiny algae that lives inside corals called Symbiodinium or "zooxanthellae". This algae exists in a symbiotic relationship with the coral: the algae photosynthesises and gives a bunch of food to the coral and the coral in turn provides the algae with shelter. When the coral's under stress, it boots the algae out of its nice little safe space and "bleaches" (corals are technically see-through. The algae gives them their colour so when they're gone they appear white). So it's very likely that there's something wrong with the zooxanthellae under stress.
Thing is, though, some of the species of zooxanthellae seem to be more tolerant to increases in temperature than others and we don't really know why. So I thought it might have something to do with the nutrients in the algae. Turns out, I may have been right.
You see, I found that more tolerant types of zooxanthellae have completely different protein structures than those that are sensitive to temperature changes. We're not sure exactly what that means, and we need wildly more data to support the theory, but it's definitely interesting. You see, proteins are super important for photosynthesis within algae. If you change how they're shaped, you can change how much light they can use. Plus as they experience an overload of temperature and light, these proteins can degrade. This breakdown could be signalling to the coral that they need to go and boom. Bleaching.
It's interesting re-reading my work for me. There are so many things I wish I had done differently and so many memories associated with the chapters (not all of them good but I suppose that's how it goes). Regardless, I'm enormously proud of myself for finishing this and adding to the pool of knowledge that's hopefully one day used to save the Great Barrier Reef.
