Coral which glows with a rainbow of colours despite being found in deep water reefs could be used to help trace cancer cells, according to scientists.

Experts discovered the coral in the Red Sea and they believe the pigments which create the colours could be used for new imaging tools for medical applications.

The team studied the coral at depths of more than 160ft and found that many of them glow brightly with fluorescent colours, ranging from green over yellow to red.

Jorg Wiedenmann, professor of biological oceanography and head of the University of Southampton’s coral reef laboratory, said: “These fluorescent pigments are proteins.

“When they are illuminated with blue or ultraviolet light, they give back light of longer wavelengths, such as reds or greens.

“Their optical properties potentially make them important tools for biomedical imaging applications, as their fluorescent glow can be used to highlight living cells or cellular structures of interest under the microscope.

“They could also be applied to track cancer cells or as tools to screen for new drugs.”

The pigments which make the colours are often found in shallow-water coral, where they can act as sunscreens for the coral and its symbiotic algae, but they were unexpected at depths where coral struggles to collect enough light to sustain the photosynthesis.

Gal Eyal, PhD candidate at the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences, Israel, said: “Corals from these so-called mesophotic reefs are less well studied, since they are beyond the depth limits of standard scuba diving techniques.

“Advances in technical diving have enabled us to explore coral communities from these deeper waters.

“Since only the blue parts of the sunlight penetrate to depths greater than 50 metres, we were not expecting to see any red colouration around.

“To our surprise, we found a number of corals showing an intense green or orange glow. This could only be due to the presence of fluorescent pigments.”

The research, which also involved Tel Aviv University, is published in the research journal PLOS One.

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