Project description:Dinoflagellates are phytoplanktonic organisms found in both freshwater and marine habitats. They are often studied because related to harmful algal blooms responsible for impacts on ecosystem functioning, economic damages for aquaculture and fishery industries and/or deleterious impacts for human health. In addition they are also known to produce bioactive compounds, such as for the treatment of cancer or beneficial effects for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. The dinoflagellate Amphidinium sp. is a cosmopolitan dinoflagellate species known to produce both cytotoxic and beneficial compounds. However, several studies reported that environmental changes (e.g. nutrient starvation, UV radiation and ocean acidification) may alter this production. The aim of this study was to sequence the full transcriptome of the dinoflagellate Amphidinium carterae in both nitrogen- starved and -repleted culturing conditions (1) to evaluated its response to nitrogen starvation, (2) to look for possible polyketide synthases (PKSs), involved in the synthesis of various compounds, in this studied clone, (3) if present, to evaluate if nutrient starvation can influence PKS activity, (4) to test strain cytotoxicity on human cells and (5) to look for other possible enzymes/proteins of biotechnological interest.
Project description:The conservation and growth of natural capital accumulated in the seas and oceans is essential for the provision of sustainable ecosystem services and for the achievement of the EU’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the UN for 2030. Therefore, Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) offers a comprehensive and holistic approach for the protection of the European sea, acting as an environmental pillar of the EU’s broader maritime strategy. The blue economy conveys that a healthier sea is a more productive sea. Concretely, blue biotechnology, which uses, among others, shellfish, bacteria and algae for development in health care and energy production, needs a healthy ocean, biodiversity and biomass abundance to provide innovative substances that help in the production in innovative medicines for the maintenance of human health. Moreover, marine biomass has become a potent source of new and innovative biotechnological tools for new therapeutic strategies and compounds that will increases the utility of marine biomass valorization processes and the quest of new solutions to present diseases. Recently, proteomics approaches has highlighted its potential use to discover new activities with potential biotechnological applications from proteome data through “applied proteomics”. Finally, in the context of global climate change, it is also becoming more and more demanding to anticipate alterations and responses of bioindicator species and to create a database to prevent and predict the environmental and climatic changes before the damage being irreversible. In this project, The proteome analysis of the sea anemone, Anemonia sulcata and its symbiont will lead to the identification of gene expression biomarkers (GEBs), as emerging powerful diagnostic tools, for identifying and characterizing climate change drivers (temperature and irradiance) stress and improving monitoring techniques. In addition, By the application of novel algorithms to detect bioactive compounds based on the analysis of proteome marine-derived molecules will enable the identification of proteins with potential applications in agri-food and biomedicine fields.
Project description:Dinoflagellate blooms are natural phenomena that have drawn global attention due to their huge negative impacts on marine ecosystems, mariculture and human health. Although the understanding of dinoflagellate blooms has been significantly improved over the past half century, little is known about the underlying mechanisms sustaining the high biomass growth rate during the bloom period which is paradoxically characterized by low dissolved CO2 and inorganic nutrients. Here, we compared the metaproteomes of non-bloom, mid-bloom and late-bloom cells of a marine dinoflagellate Prorocentrum donghaiense in the coastal East China Sea, to understand the underlying mechanisms sustaining high biomass growth rate under the typically low CO2 and inorganic nutrient conditions.
