Soluble lectin LePin mediates alga recognition to initiate coral-algal endosymbiosis

A set of genes, including a lectin, two scavenger receptors and two actin regulators, were found to aid the early steps of coral-algal endosymbiosis, including algae recognition and uptake, in a Xenia soft coral species. The findings were made possible by using a combination of RNA interference-mediated gene knockdown, single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq), bioinformatics and cell biology approaches.