![\"Margherita](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Margherita_Bassi.png\")
<\/p>\nA coral is often a colony of tiny, genetically identical animals. New research suggests that when a bleached coral fragment comes into physical contact with a colorful, thriving clone, the pale one can revive within weeks<\/p>\n
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Margherita Bassi<\/a><\/p>\n | Daily Correspondent<\/p>\n October 20, 2026<\/p>\n Bleached coral fragments touching healthy clones took as little as four weeks to recover fully. When humans need to feel rejuvenated, they touch grass. When corals need to recover from bleaching, they should touch a healthy clone, according to new research.<\/p>\n Lab experiments suggest that bleached coral can bounce back within weeks of coming into physical contact with a colorful, genetically identical piece of itself. While the remarkable healing method, published on October 14 in the journal Science Advances<\/a>, likely can\u2019t restore all the world\u2019s sick corals on its own, the discovery could help inspire new recovery strategies.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were blown away [to] actually watch the healthy coral restore the color of the bleached corals essentially right before our eyes,\u201d lead author Danny Collins<\/a>, a marine biologist at Stanford University, tells KQED<\/a>\u2019s Danielle Venton. \u201cIt was so much faster and more intense than we ever expected.\u201d<\/p>\n Most corals are colonies of small animals<\/a> called polyps. Polyps in one colony have the same genetics<\/a>, meaning they are clones of one another. When their watery environment gets too warm too fast, corals lose the colorful, beneficial algae in their tissues that provide energy. Without these vital partners, corals starve, are susceptible to harmful algae, and grow pale\u2014hence the term bleached. Total recovery, if possible, can take months to years.<\/p>\n Researchers were shocked at how fast the analyzed bleached coral pieces recovered.<\/p>\n Danny Collins<\/p>\n But in 2025, study co-author and Stanford marine scientist Steve Palumbi<\/a> stumbled upon a strange possible cure. A healthy hunk of coral had accidentally tipped over and was touching a bleached piece from the same colony in a laboratory tank. At their point of contact, the pale fragment had regained its color, meaning the beneficial algae had returned.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Collins had been brainstorming about how dangerous bacteria can enter corals when contaminated materials, like plastic debris, touch them. He wondered if researchers could leverage this phenomenon to help corals instead.<\/p>\n \u201cHarmful bacteria enter corals through physical contact,\u201d Collins explains in a statement<\/a>. \u201cWe were curious about what would happen if we used contact to reintroduce something good\u2014the beneficial algae from healthy corals.\u201d<\/p>\n So, the team tested the idea with ten coral fragment pairs\u2014each with one bleached and one colorful piece roughly 1.5 inches long\u2014from the same colony. Half were set up so the sick and healthy fragments were touching, while the others had a millimeters-wide gap between the two branches. All bleached corals touching healthy clones fully healed within seven weeks, but the bleached fragments in non-touching pairs fared poorly, and some died.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat was most exciting about this was seeing the remarkable potential that bleached corals have to rapidly recover,\u201d Collins tells SFGate<\/a>\u2019s Anna FitzGerald Guth. \u201cThese bleached corals are often treated as a lost cause.\u201d<\/p>\n Quick fact: Good news for wild corals<\/p>\n This past summer, researchers reported that more than 64,000 square miles of coral reefs might be more resilient to the warming ocean<\/a> than previously thought.<\/p>\n Taking a closer look under a high-powered microscope revealed that physical contact between two coral clones allowed them to align little channels in their tissues. The healthy coral could then send beneficial algae and nutrients to the stressed one. The team saw transferred material in sick corals after just three days of contact.<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, the fragments didn\u2019t have to touch for the entire duration of the recovery. After roughly one week of contact, bleached corals could disconnect and continue recovering independently. Separated fragments even recovered at the same rate as coral pairs that stayed together. Further experiments revealed that the speedy recovery was largely thanks to algae replicating at record-setting rates inside the sick coral, rather than continuous transfer from the healthy coral.<\/p>\n Beneficial algae and nutrients flowed from the healthy coral to the sickly one.\u00a0<\/p>\n Danny Collins \/ Jana Sipkova<\/p>\n While the discovery is exciting, it won\u2019t directly translate into a recovery method in the wild, Collins tells Agence France-Presse<\/a>\u2019s Issam Ahmed. \u201cWe likely will not be touching corals to each other on reefs,\u201d he says. It\u2019s impractical to create healthy clones of all corals before bleaching events, per KQED.<\/p>\n Additionally, the solution won\u2019t help dead corals, Terry Hughes<\/a>, a marine biologist at James Cook University in Australia who wasn\u2019t involved in the study, tells the New York Times<\/a>\u2019 Raymond Zhong. He adds that the best way to aid corals is to reduce emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases.<\/p>\n The findings are still \u201csuper interesting,\u201d says Andrea Grottoli<\/a>, a coral researcher at Ohio State University who also wasn\u2019t involved in the study, to the outlet. She says that the work could pave the way to \u201cmore organic\u201d ways to help corals. Reefs are invaluable marine habitats. Even though they make up merely\u00a00.01 percent of the ocean floor<\/a>, they support about a quarter of all sea life.<\/p>\n Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A coral is often a colony of tiny, genetically identical animals. New research suggests that when a bleached…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[242,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-655323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/smithsonian_feature_images_28.png\")
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\n Danny Collins<\/p>\n![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/coral-timelapse-mp4-file.gif\")
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