The mass die-off of coral reefs due is a catastrophe of global proportions, but the sheer scale of their success as organisms has lessons for science.

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Case in point: these 3D-printed “bionic corals” from Cambridge researchers that are more than scaffolds for fragile microorganisms — they’re built out of them. If 3D-printed corals sound familiar, that’s because a couple years ago some other researchers suggested using structures printed to resemble the complex shapes of reefs as solid bases on which new corals and other animals could grow.

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It’s a good idea, but there’s more to a reef than a solid base. Corals are in fact a highly evolved symbiosis between the coral organisms themselves and algae that live inside them. The algae use photosynthesis to power the creation of sugar for their host, and the coral provide a safe living environment — and, interestingly, are also highly efficient at […]

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