Opportunity, Exploration, and Change in Metamorphosis

5/7/2025

By Samantha Zinnia Fernandes

The new moon perpetuated the darkness, lapping waves broke the silence, and titans of the deep surrounded her. Emma Rangel-Huerta was there to witness a marine marvel, the coordinated birth of millions of microscopic individuals. She put on her diving mask and steadied her breath. With a jump and a surge of bubbles, she sank into an alien world. Rangel-Huerta was incandescent as she recounted her first dive to witness the spawning of rice coral, Montipora capitata. She is now a postdoc working in Matthew Gibson’s lab at Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Missouri. Rangel-Huerta was awarded a 2023 Society for Developmental Biology Emerging Research Organisms Grant for her work establishing rice coral as a research organism useful to developmental biology.

Cnidarians, like coral and sea anemones, are evolutionarily distinct from other animals, but maintain many of the same ancient conserved genetic pathways. Rice corals are now another system used to identify and manipulate developmental components that cannot easily be studied in more complex organisms. Corals are actually colonies of individual polyps that contribute to expanding the calcium carbonate skeletons of coral reefs. Rangel-Huerta studies how these rice corals mature from motile planula larvae to sessile polyps. Over 20% of marine life depends on coral reefs for stability. Yet, much is unknown about the cues that influence the development of individual coral embryos into colonies. With climate change and pollution jeopardizing reef health, researchers are eager to learn about coral to preserve them and the marine life they support. Rangel-Huerta believes that by using short-hairpin RNA for gene knockdown and CRISPR for gene editing, her work with rice coral can provide insight into the pathways influencing coral maturation.

Growing up in Mexico City, a metropolis over 200 miles from the closest ocean, Rangel-Huerta began her education in veterinary medicine, specializing in bacterial and viral pathogens. At the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México, she visited a research lab where she peered down a microscope and watched as a zebrafish embryo developed right before her eyes. Observing its heartbeat, she wondered how organisms coordinated the change from a single cell to a mature individual. Rangel-Huerta’s curiosity led her to studies in developmental biology.

Rangel-Huerta pursued a graduate degree in Ernesto Maldonado-Olvera’s lab which brought an unexpected move, from the concrete jungle of Mexico City to the tropical jungles of the Caribbean. Bringing her closer to the sea, this research center, located right next to the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, was near mangrove sanctuaries and surrounded by wildlife. While in graduate school, Rangel-Huerta took every chance to enjoy the foreign coastline. She often volunteered for coral research and earned snorkeling and scuba diving certifications along the way. 

After her dissertation, Rangel-Huerta sought a postdoctoral position in another developmental biology lab. Her Ph.D. mentor, an avid fan of evo-devo studies, often conducted a journal club to review these papers. One of the article, written by Matthew Gibson and his lab, caught Emma's attention as it focused on the development of the coral she had become so fond of. Maldonado-Olvera encouraged her to reach out to Gibson for a postdoc position. Rangel-Huerta described their first interaction, in which she sent Gibson a brief email introducing herself and her research. She did not expect a reply, but, to her surprise, Gibson responded in less than 5 minutes exclaiming, "We have to talk!" After a virtual interview with the Gibson lab, Rangel-Huerta was again on the move, this time to the Stowers Institute in Missouri at the tail end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now at Stowers, Rangel-Huerta is enthusiastic about using high-resolution microscopy to document the metamorphosis of rice coral embryos. Her first inspiration in developmental biology is now a daily part of her research. The biggest challenge of Rangel-Huerta’s research is the logistics of transporting a team of researchers and all their fieldwork gear to the Coral Resilience Lab at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) to coincide with the once-a-year spawning event. However, the Gibson lab has now developed an indoor spawning system for coral rearing that can replicate the temperature and moon cycles of not just Hawaiian reefs, but also of reefs from all over the world.

Rice Coral (M. capitata) polyps at one month of age labeled with GFP (green). Autofluorescence of their symbiotic algae (magenta). Captured with an epifluorescence microscope. (Credit: Emma Rangel-Huerta)

Using techniques first developed by the lab for sea anemones (Nematostella), Rangel-Huerta can now conduct genetic manipulation experiments on rice coral embryos in Kansas City to better understand their developmental mechanisms. With these spawning systems, the Gibson team at Stowers operates differently than the average lab, beginning work late at night to match the life cycle of the coral. Their workdays often start in the evening with the fertilization of the coral embryos at 10 pm. The early cell divisions of the coral embryo are observed and photographed around midnight and gastrulation is over by 24 hours post-fertilization.

Rangel-Huerta is grateful to have been selected for the Emerging Research Organisms Grant and appreciates this chance to share the person behind the science. She hopes to inspire others with her story of personal research metamorphosis. She encourages students to use research opportunities and explorations of outside interests to sample topics and find the best research fit. Rangel-Huerta said each experience helped clarify her interests and encouraged her to become an interdisciplinary researcher.

When not in the lab, Rangel-Huerta loves to travel to other countries and experience a day in the life of a local. She loves to try new foods, explore museums, and visit the nearest ocean shore. The sound of the waves, the call of the gulls, and the feel of the sun on her skin rejuvenate her. Rangel-Huerta is excited to use the grant to support more fieldwork in the coral reefs of Hawaii. As she put it, “Hawaii is not just for vacations! … I hope my research can contribute to a better understanding of how this wonderful [coral reef] ecosystem forms.”

Last Updated 05/07/2025