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H2020Individual fellowship2017–2019

ADAPTOMICS · Adaptations to temperature regimes in sponges: Genomic insights into the developmental and physiological evolutionary changes of early-branching metazoans

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2017-06-01 → 2019-05-31
EU contribution
€195,455
Participants
1
Scheme
MSCA-IF-EF-ST

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Results in brief

Adaptations to temperature regimes in sponges: Genomic insights into the developmental and physiological evolutionary changes of early-branching metazoans

Animals in Antarctic seas have adapted to some of the most challenging conditions found anywhere on the planet. Temperatures generally ranging between 0 to -1.8 C and a food supply which fluctuates widely from summer to winter render their survival difficult. Nevertheless, species have found the means to live in such conditions. How do they do this? The major aim of ADAPTOMICS was the identification of the molecular mechanisms by which species can adapt to extreme environments, focusing in particular on demosponges, which are prevalent in polar seas and form the basis of Antarctic ecosystems. This allows us to begin to unravel the precise details of how species adapt to the cold, and to learn whether the same adaptive molecular mechanisms are observed in common in different species found in the same environments. This is important for society in both specific and general ways: - Specifically, sponges are vital components of the Antarctic benthos. By studying how they survive in these conditions, we can understand whether they will be robust to future changes in temperature. This is vital as we adjust to. and interpret the impact of, likely climate change scenarios. - More generally, the ability to survive challenging conditions provides clues to enable us to understand how life can evolve to meet challenges. Our dataset is powerful, as it represents multiple independent evolutionary events, and will allow the examination of how reproducible evolution is. - The resources put in place by this project will be useful for a range of future work in sponges and more generally in the investigation of Antarctic evolution. Overall scientific objectives of this project were as follows: Objective 1: To use transcriptomics and genomics to discover novel molecular means by which sponge species have adapted to challenging environments Objective 2: To reveal the means of adaptation at a genetic level - whether duplication and divergence, splice variation, or other means are used to drive gene evolution Objective 3: To determine whether these adaptations have evolved convergently in the species of sponge examined (and thus likely to be mirrored in other species in the same ecosystem) or are shared ancestrally by sponge species found in Antarctic conditions Objective 4: To describe the role, expression and evolution of individual cold-adapted molecules in detail, both in silico and in vivo.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

Species which inhabit the Antarctic have evolved to exist in some of the most challenging conditions found anywhere on the planet. Marine creatures must cope with sea temperatures generally ranging between 0 to -1.8 degrees Celsius and a food supply which fluctuates widely from summer to winter, rendering their survival difficult. Nevertheless, species have found the means to thrive in such conditions. Their adaptation to cold environments will have included a host of genetic changes, and to date we still know little about the nature of these molecular adaptations, the way these act in vivo, and the exact benefits such changes confer.I aim to investigate the molecular differences between congeneric species of sponge adapted to vastly differing thermal environments and find the means by which these species adapt to cold conditions. This will be approached in several ways, starting with transcriptomic sequencing of six species of sponges of genera Axinella, Mycale and Phorbas. These are abundant in the Antarctic, Caribbean and Mediterranean seas, and play essential roles in the benthic ecosystems in which they are found. Transcriptomic analyses will be supplemented by genomic sequencing, RNA in situ hybridization, molecular ecological and functional approaches.This will allow me multiple means of assaying the molecular and population-level diversity of these sponges, and, specifically, how they have evolved to live in such cold environments. More broadly, these findings will allow us to begin to determine whether the same adaptive molecular mechanisms to extreme cold are used repeatedly across sponge and animal phylogeny. Any evidence of convergent evolution to extreme cold will suggest constraints on the means of adaptation. Similarly, novel molecular changes would be of great interest to a wide variety of fields. Our findings will therefore add substantially to a nascent area of enquiry, and provide a firm basis for future work both in these species and beyond.

Original text from CORDIS.

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Data: CORDIS, © European Union