| Grant number: | 18/05923-3 |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor |
| Start date: | July 23, 2018 |
| End date: | July 22, 2019 |
| Field of knowledge: | Biological Sciences - Zoology |
| Principal Investigator: | Federico David Brown Almeida |
| Grantee: | Laurel Sky Hiebert |
| Supervisor: | Stefano Tiozzo |
| Host Institution: | Instituto de Biociências (IB). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil |
| Institution abroad: | Laboratoire de Biologie du Développement de Villefranche-sur-Mer (LBDV), France |
| Associated to the scholarship: | 15/14052-8 - Origins of coloniality: Developmental mechanisms and directionality of colonial coalescence in ascidians, BP.PD |
Abstract Colonial organisms, those that reproduce clonally and remain organically attached, can survive changing environmental conditions by adding/removing modules. Additionally, many colonial species survive adverse conditions by going dormant, where modules or whole colonies enter a state of physiological and morphological inactivity. Coloniality arose independently many times in the metazoans, and dormancy has evolved in almost all the classes of colonial animals. Yet the link between coloniality and dormancy remains unexplored. I hypothesize that dormancy arose in colonial lineages via co-option of mechanisms underlying asexual reproduction and regenerative potential present in colonial taxa. Colonial species rely on populations of circulatory stem cells that drive asexual development. I predict that the origins of dormancy in colonial species involved a cytological recruitment of these stem cells. Ascidians, a family within the subphylum Tunicata, provide a fitting model for understanding the origins/mechanisms of dormancy. My postdoctoral project focuses on the stem cells and their involvement in budding and the origins of coloniality. For my BEPE project, I propose to explore another similarly important developmental mechanism of colonial animals, i.e. dormancy. I propose to examine the environmental, morphological, and molecular characteristics of dormancy in two ascidian species that have independently evolved both coloniality and dormancy. I will determine the environmental cues that induce and release dormancy in the lab and field. I will examine dormant tissues and cells using histology and microscopy and compare transcriptome profiles of dormant vs. non-dormant tissues. Results from this work will provide the foundation for ascidians as a model for the origins of dormancy. Results will show if the origins of dormancy as a survival strategy display mechanistic links to coloniality, such as the deployment of circulatory stem cells. This work will directly contribute to my postdoctoral project, and enhance our understanding of the origins and mechanisms of complex life histories. (AU) | |
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