Seminar Details

Multiple venoms in a single species: Complex spatiotemporal regulation of toxin production in the starlet sea anemone Nematostella vectensis

Date

22/06/2017

Lecturers

Dr. Yehu Moran - Dept. of Ecology, Evolution & Behavior, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Abstract

The model sea anemone Nematostella vectensis offers unprecedented tools unavailable for any other venomous animal. These tools include unlimited access to all developmental stages, gene knockdowns and knockouts and introduction of reporter genes into the genome. In our studies we harness these valuable tools to the study of venom. The appearance of stinging cells and ectodermal glands cells in very early life stages of Nematostella as well as our transcriptomic and gene localization studies reveal that venom is synthesized already in early embryos and larvae and that different toxins are expressed in distinct life stages and cell populations. These surprising findings can be explained by the vastly different ecology of the larva and adult anemone as sea anemones develop from a miniature non-feeding mobile planula to a much larger sessile polyp that predates on other animals. Further, the results suggest a much more complex and dynamic venom landscape than initially appreciated. To fully map this landscape we are generating transgenic animals that express fluorescent reporters fused to toxins under the control of toxin genetic regulatory elements enabling high-resolution toxin localization. We also apply fluorescence activated cell sorting to sequence the transcriptome of each toxin-producing cell type of the transgenic lines. These approaches expand our understanding of the origins of toxin-producing cells in Cnidaria and bring together biological disciplines that rarely meet, such as developmental biology and toxinology, to enable the first panoramic view of the dynamics of venom production.

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