Anti-calcification, the key of the origin of invertebrate caclcification ?

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Project objective

The sudden appearance of calcified skeletons among many different invertebrate taxa at the Precambrian/Cambrian transition may have required minor reorganizations of pre-existing secretory products, in particular mucous substances of the epithelial tissues. In the Late Proterozoic, muci would have prevented spontaneous calcium carbonate overcrusting of soft tissues exposed to the supersaturated ocean, a function that we define as 'anti-calcification'. In the Early Cambrian times, the inhibiting substances of the muci would have been reorganized to form skeletal matrices. The hypothesis that skeletal matrices are derived by evolution from muc will be tested via molecular biology approach. In particular, the construction of cDNA libraries from calcifying tissues of mussels and the screenings of these libraries with antibody probes will permit to isolate genes encoding for inhibiting peptides found in both mucus and skeletal matrices. The calcium-binding properties of mucus peptides will also be investigated.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

• LEIDEN UNIVERSITY · LEIDENCoordinatorNetherlands
• Not availableCity levelFrance

Links

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