Project description:Transcriptional profiling of purple sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) larvae cultured under three different seawater CO2 concentrations 400, 800, 1200 µatm. The goal was to determine the effects of CO2, an important climate change variable, on global gene expression
Project description:Transcriptional profiling of purple sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) larvae cultured under three different seawater CO2 concentrations 400, 800, 1200 M-BM-5atm. The goal was to determine the effects of CO2, an important climate change variable, on global gene expression Larvae were cultured under three different seawater CO2 concentrations 400, 800, 1200 M-BM-5atm, each with four replicate cultures, and sampled at two developmental stages (gastrula and pluteus)
Project description:Classical embryological studies revealed that during mid-embryogenesis vertebrates show similar morphologies. This “phylotypic stage” has recently received support from transcriptome analyses, which have also detected similar stages in nematodes and arthropods. A conserved stage in these three phyla has led us to ask if all animals pass through a universal definitive stage as a consequence of ancestral constraints on animal development. Previous work has suggested that HOX genes may comprise such a ‘zootypic’ stage, however this hypothetical stage has hitherto resisted systematic analysis. We have examined the embryonic development of ten different animals each of a fundamentally different phylum, including a segmented worm, a flatworm, a roundworm, a water bear, a fruitfly, a sea urchin, a zebrafish, a sea anemone, a sponge, and a comb jelly. For each species, we collected the embryonic transcriptomes at ~100 different developmental stages and analyzed their gene expression profiles. We found dynamic gene expression across all of the species that is structured in a stage like manner. Strikingly, we found that animal embryology contains two dominant modules of zygotic expression in terms of their protein domain composition: one involving proliferation, and a second involving differentiation. The switch between these two modules involves induction of the zootype; which in addition to homeobox containing genes, also involves Wnt and Notch signaling as well as forkhead domain transcription factors. Our results provide a systematic characterization of animal universality and identify the points of embryological constraints and flexibility.
Project description:Using hMeDIP-seq we validated the single-base resolution hydroxymethylomes (ACE-seq) of sea urchin, lancelet and zebrafish embryos.
