When whales die and sink to their watery graves, they bring to the seafloor bones rich in those fatty lipids. Thousands of bone-eating females, each just few millimeters high, will infest a whale carcass. So many will accumulate, the whale bones will appear to be covered in a circa 1970’s red shag rug-a rug that eats bones, has harems, and secretes acids, but otherwise a normal shag rug.  Originally, and with good reason, it was thought that Osedax was clearly a whale-fall specialist. The core of whale bones consists of a matrix rich in lipids – up to 60 percent.

But what about something wholly different?  Before the age of large marine mammals, large marine reptiles dominated the oceans. During the Mesozoic Era, rising to dominance in the Triassic and Jurassic periods, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and nothosaurs represented a diverse group of large marine predators terrorizing smaller creatures in the dark depths. The ichthyosaur Shonisaurus may have reached lengths of up to 21 meters in the Late Jurassic and Plesiosaurus may been 12–15 meters in length. The ancient sunken carcasses of these massive marine reptiles may have hosted ancient Osedax. We do know that prehistoric ichthyosaur falls are known to support communities similar to modern whale falls. 

Not to be outdone by other scientists in throwing random things on the seafloor to see what will eat it, in early 2019 I placed not one but three dead alligators on the seafloor in the deep Gulf of Mexico.  Alligators are nice modern analogues of the giant reptiles that once lurked in paleo-oceans and in my current state of Louisiana…well…readily available. And because we could, we place a packet of cow bones down there as well. 53 days later, my team and I visit the alligator carcass to find nothing but bones.  The reddish hue of fuzziness on them indicates Osedax are present.  On May 3, 2019, we overnight some of the collected bones out to California so Greg Rouse can inspect them in his lab and confirm their presence.  We wait patiently for an email from Greg.  On May 23, we get an email from him with the subject “Two new species :-)”. We are elated! Indeed, he finds females with well-developed ovaries and eggs.  Using genetics, he determines that the Osedax on the alligator and cow bones are both new species, previously unknown to science.

Fast forward to today when I get an email with the subject “Your species”. That Osedax from the alligator is named after me.

Osedax craigmcclaini n. sp. is named for Dr. Craig McClain, an esteemed deep-sea biologist and colleague who led the experimental alligator fall project (McClain et al., 2019) and provided the Osedax specimens for this study.

New Species of Osedax (Siboglinidae: Annelida) from New Zealand and the Gulf of Mexico

The post Introducing a New Species: My Namesake, a New Bone-Eating Worm first appeared on Deep Sea News.

I was just listening to a podcast about how sea sponges use the pores all over their body to “bring in food and release wastes” and I’m pretty sure that’s a scientific way of saying the holes in sponges are all just mouths and buttholes so does that mean that when I’m using a sponge in the shower I’m cleaning my body with mouths and buttholes? Someone get me a marine biologist. And a loofah. And maybe some bleach.  -The Bloggess

All around you are animals with a single hole serving as both a mouth and anus.  These mono-orifice animals have an incomplete digestive system.  In contrast, those animals blessed with two holes, a tubular digestive system with an in and out hole, possess a complete digestive system.

Sponges are a bit of a unique case as a loose conglomeration of cells in a body full of pores and channels.  None of this really resembles organs or a digestive system with digesting occurring within individual cells.  However, the Cnidarians, including jellyfish, anemones, and corals,  are all uni-aperture.  We can also add the Ctenophores, the comb jellies, into this lone door group of animals.

In the flatworms, the Platyhelminthes, its mixed bag of one, two, and even more bodily gateways.  Most flatworms have no anus, but some particularly long species do possess an anus. In rare cases, flatworms with very complex branch guts can have more than one anus.  By the way, the plural can be either anuses or ani.

Peeping at the underside of a starfish, you might have only noticed a giant mouth.  You may be thinking to yourself, “I’ve never seen another opening.  Do starfishes have an anus?”  Of course, this is one of the great questions of life.  Indeed,  most starfishes have a complete digestive system with the anus being a small opening on the top. However, there is a large order of starfish, the Paxillosida, that lack an anus.  The only other group of Echinoderms to lack an anus, and even an intestine, is the brittle stars.

A solitary black hole may also occur during specific phases of animals life cycle.  An incomplete digestive system is known in some insects including the sap-sucking aphid relatives, the Phylloxera, during their sexual phase.  Some larvae including those of some fish and proboscis worms can be anally deficient.  Certain lifestyles also can lead to solo agujero such as in parasitic species, like parasitic copepods.

It’s important to remember that all animals start development with one hole, the blastopore.  In the ventrally chosen, a second hole forms later.  So the question remains if some animals form only a single hole is it a mouth that used as anus or anus used as a mouth?  The proverbial digestive pore chicken and egg scenario.

As described in this excellent post, 

Blastopore formation is started by a protein called disheveled, which gets stuck at the top of the egg and then activates a specific set of genes. In the same location of jellyfish embryos, however, there are genes strikingly similar to the mouth genes of bilaterians. In the sea urchin, a bilaterian, these same mouth genes are also on the top of the embryo. However, disheveled has moved to the bottom. The blastopore forms at this new site of disheveled accumulation, rather than at the mouth. The mouth genes that remain on top still direct the formation of the mouth there. Martindale and Hejnol posit that moving disheveled from the top to the bottom of the embryo in some animals moved the location of blastopore, but that the mouth stayed put. In some bilaterians, like urchins and humans, the blastopore then became the anus. In this scenario all mouths are homologous to each other, whether the animal has one or two holes.

Evolution can be a truly wonderful thing and then sometimes it can produce an animal with a mouth that still uses its anus to feed.

The post A Tale of One Opening first appeared on Deep Sea News.

While this misconception or inaccuracy may seem harmless, it could pose problems for future conservation efforts, as people are more likely to support conservation of cute rather than creepy-looking animals. While the angler fish is easily turned into a scary monster, the similar-sized tiny Pac-Man looking octopus is cute and popular with the public…If images are posted on social media by laypeople in a way that appears sensational and even heartless, and without any accurate information about the animals, then there is no resulting respect for these sea creatures or educational value. Simply viewing these creatures as freaks, ignores the importance of their role in keeping our oceans healthy.

More recently, DSN republished a very tongue-and-cheek rant about the uselessness of ocean sunfish.  This drew criticism in the comments. “We are in no position to dis other species.” “Agree with…other pelagic researchers…molas are awesome, fast, predators that given their numbers and chosen prey must play an integral role in the open ocean ecosystem. Please stop spreading this rant.”  Let’s not also forget the post where we railed against the cute, cuddly view of dolphins and received a backlash of comments.

So first thing is for everybody to take a breath and stop taking yourselves so damn seriously.

Nobody is going to protect and conserve what they do not know or understand.  These pieces use a whimsical and creative writing style and informal tone to draw the audiences in.  Quite simply these posts draw views, far more than other kinds of posts here at DSN.  The reason?  Because we tap into the human curiosity of the natural world and instill a sense of awe. Or maybe because most people have a sense of humor and like science with a helping of laughter. Humor, ick factor, bizarreness, oddities, and challenging the way we think about species allows us to deliver knowledge.  How many people actually knew about ocean sunfish before the viral rant?

More than once over the years DSN has been criticized for being “too informal”, “not being serious enough about science”, and by far my favorite to date “tarting up science.”

This “oh-so-hip” presentation of a very interesting phenomenon is regrettable. I stopped reading halway [sic] through it as I couldn’t take any more. Just present the science. Tarting it up for people to read is pointless. Such readers have no value. Too bad, I would have liked to learn the real scinece [sic] presented here.

I CAN NOT DISAGREE MORE WITH THESE COMMENTERS.  Our “tarting it up” is and will remain a core value for DSN.  We will continue to work diligently to make science accessible, relevant, current, and of course fun.  Now more than ever.  You know what happens to science writing that is not engaging?  Nobody engages with it.   Quite frankly, the old way of dry science communication and being serious about science did not work.  Science communication occurred within echo chamber and we all patted ourselves on the back for a job well done.  Now, look where we are at. We need new methods engaging new audiences—those audiences that some think have no value.  For Pete’s sake, let’s lighten up and get sense of humor.

More than once here at DSN, we have referred to ocean organisms as monsters.  From parasitic crustaceans to colossal squids, we have playfully applied the monster moniker.  Quite frankly, I believe it is completely acceptable to call deep-sea species monsters, freaks, and oddities.  Anything else would not acknowledge how other worldly, bizarre, fascinating, unique, and, indeed, special these deep-sea species actually are.  That otherness reflects a fascinating evolutionary trajectory these organisms to adapt to the environmental extremes of the deep sea.  They are nothing short of beautiful monsters full of adaptive solutions to the most unique place on earth.  If Monster’s Inc., Where the Wild Things Are, and Cookie Monster taught us anything is that monster’s are lovable and beautiful.

By the way did you know the spinal column of M. mola contains fewer vertebrae and is shorter in relation to the body than that of any other fish.  That’s weird.  Why and how did that happen?  Which brings me to my next point.  When we acknowledge oddity, everyone’s natural next questions are why and how? That’s a good thing…opening the door for some amazing science communication.  To borrow from the ever articulate Jamie Vernon, “Curiosity expands our worldview.”   This weirdness inspires awe and instead of harming them may ultimately lead to their protection.

There is also nothing wrong with acknowledging that some animals suck.  Evolution does not create perfect animals.  Evolution creates just good enough animals.  Anything changes—environment, competitors, predators—those species become not so good.  The history of life on Earth is riddled with story of story of species that just could not cut it; over five billion in fact or more than 99% of all species are now extinct.  The Mola mola, or the ocean sunfish, in many regards is a ridiculous animal with some very peculiar behaviors and evolutionarily good enough.  Of course, I love ocean sunfish because of these.  Also take pandas.  They kind of suck at being a species.

Female pandas can expect a solid 16 years of fertility, but they only ovulate once a year, and can only handle one set of offspring every two years. There’s no clearer recipe for extinction.

In 1940, geneticist Richard Goldschmidt suggested that new species may arise not by gradual change but by macromutations.  Of course, these major mutational changes may be disastrous and fatal.  He called these monsters.  But in very rare circumstances, one of these macromutations, by shear dumb luck, may produce a very well adapted animal ready to exploit a completely new way of life.  His term of these?  Hopeful monsters.

I choose to embrace those hopeful monsters for their oddity, their differences, and sometimes even their suckiness.

The post So yeah ocean sunfish are ridiculous, dolphins are @#$@&, and deep-sea anglerfish are monsters first appeared on Deep Sea News.

*alternative titles include “Looking a gift seahorse (genome) in the mouth”, “My kingdom for a seahorse genome”, “Hold your seahorses“, and “The galloping evolution of seahorses“.

Let’s face it, seahorses, pipefishes, and seadragons are messed up. That’s not a subjective opinion but an evolutionary fact.  It’s like all the approximately 300 species in Syngnathidae (the family of fish that contains all these critters) held a meeting and decided unanimously “Nah, screw it, we’ll do things however we damn well please.”  The Syngnathids are revolutionaries of the fish world.  ¡Viva la Evolución Revolución!

Seriously, almost everything in these species is different.  There is the elongated snouts and small mouths and jaws.  The pelvic and caudal fins are often gone.  The scales are replaced with an armor of bony plates.  Let’s not forget about the whole “male pregnancy” thing where the males nourish the developing embryos in a pouch.  Seahorses take it all to a whole other level with the prehensile tail and the vertical body axis.

So ultimately, one is left wondering what’s up with those genes?  Well, thanks to an intrepid group of geneticist, the complete genome of the tiger tail seahorse, Hippocampus comes, is complete.  With the full genome comes great power, the ability to compare this genome to the other sequenced fish.

Part of the story regarding the bizarreness of seahorses is gene loss.   Secretory calcium-binding phosphoprotein (SCPP) genes code for matrix proteins that are important in the formation of bone and teeth.  These genes are completely missing in Hippocampus comes and may explain why seahorses do not have teeth.  Did I forget to mention that?  Yeah seahorses and seadragons are toothless. The tbx4 gene, conserved in jawed vertebrates, acts as a regulator of hindlimb formation.  The gene is completely absent in the seahorse genome and explains the absence of those pesky pelvic fins.

What about that whole “male pregnancy” thing?   The H. comes genome contains six pastn genes, part of a family of genes that regulate the hatching of embryos.  The researchers conducted extra work, like the genome was not enough, suggesting a role for these pastn genes in brood pouch development and/or hatching of embryos within the brood pouch prior to birth.

Seahorses have also apparently lost many conserved noncoding genes (CNEs) that function as enhancers, repressors, and insulators of other genes.  1,612 CNEs have been lost in seahorses.  Compare this to the 281 in the Nile perch.  It is unclear how the loss of the CNEs may be related to some of the oddities of the seahorse, but loss of CNEs is tied to moderate short stature and shortened limbs in humans.

How I imagine the scientists of the study acted once they finished the genome

The awesomeness of this kind of work cannot even be articulated.  The researchers have done an amazing job of unpacking the genome of a seahorse and showing how genome evolution directly leads to all the uniqueness of seahorses.  Admittedly, I am little disappointed in not seeing a discussion of the prehensile tails genes and armored plating discussed. I guess I’ll need to wait a bit to build my army of aquatic minions to take over the world.

The post In the evolution of fishes, this is a one seahorse race* first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Galindo LA, Puillandre N, Strong EE, Bouchet P (2014) Using microwaves to prepare gastropods for DNA barcoding. Molecular Ecology Resources, 14(4): 700-705.

This paper is so simple, yet so epic in so many ways:

We have experimented with a method traditionally used to clean shells that involves placing the living gastropods in a microwave (MW) oven; the electromagnetic radiation very quickly heats both the animal and the water trapped inside the shell, resulting in separation of the muscles that anchor the animal to the shell. Done properly, the body can be removed intact from the shell and the shell voucher is preserved undamaged.

To reiterate: these researchers put snails in the microwave and got a paper out of it. Now of course, this is actually a brilliant method – the scientists stumbled across this quick fix because they need to preserve BOTH the shell and DNA from their specimens. With such thick shells, preservatives can’t get into the tissue very easily, and other methods (boiling the snails alive! or using chemical relaxants to pull out the muscle) are time consuming, sloooowwwwww, and downright dangerous:

To some extent, [these methods] can also represent a hazard (electrical drill and boiling water) on an unstable research vessel at sea.

Microwaves can zap lots of animals quickly and keep all their DNA intact!

This paper also wins for the most unnecessary use of acronyms, shortening the terms for microwaves (MW) and microwave ovens (MWO). So in everyday life I guess we can now further reduce MWs to a hand signal, and just say that we’re going to heat up our coffee in the “Muah”.

The post Putting snails in the microwave…for science! first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Five basic types of taste exist: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. Most people are familiar with all of these except the last, umami, which is best described as a pleasant savory taste. These tastes occur because of receptors that occur on cells in the mouth. Genes dictate the presence and number of these cells and receptors and thus taste has an evolutionary basis. Umami and sweet tastes are associated with protein-rich and nutritious foods. Salt at low concentrations is an attractive taste, as salt in small amounts is needed for proper cell function including neurons. Bitter is associated with aversion and protects from ingesting toxic substances. Sour tastes are unpleasant and can prevent the ingestion of unripe and decayed food resources. Despite these adaptive benefits of taste some animals have lost the ability to taste one or more of the basic categories. Vampire bats cannot taste umami or sweet. Chickens cannot taste sweet. What about whales? They can only taste salty.

In a recent study, a group of scientists from Nanjing Normal University and Harvard Medical Center scanned the genomes for genes related to taste in 12 whale species. Only the genes for salty receptors were found. Why would whales loose four senses of taste? Both toothed and filtering whales swallow food whole without chewing. Furthermore, when living in the oceans everything would just taste salty. No joking, salt would swamp out all the other flavors. Given this the evolutionary pressure to be able to taste all these other flavors just would not be there. Also keep in mind its not just many of the genes for taste that have been lost. Thier tongues have degenerated epithelia and only a few taste buds

But why just keep salt receptors? Like all animals, whales need to osmoregulate, i.e. balance the water and ion concentrations in the body. This is vital for cellular processes like transporting across the cellular membrane. Salt receptors are vital in reabsorption of salt a key feature of osmoregulation. So if you ever have a whale over for dinner make sure to not over salt the fish, they may be little sensitive.

Related articles

• The loss of taste genes in cetaceans

The post Whales Can Only Taste Salty first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Though we might not think much of the small pond Hydra, it’s got an incredible secret superpower. It spends much of its day extending its small tentacles and waiting for food to pass, but when the going gets rough for this little critter, it’s ready to respond. To discover its crazy trick, you need only to grind it to pieces.

To fully appreciate how bizarre Hydra is, put yourself in its shoes. Imagine you’re a Hydra, and you’re slowly being torn apart. Cell by tiny cell you are disassembled, and in the end nothing is left of you but a soup of your own bits, smeared on the bottom of a bowl. But you’re not dead, and you’re not going to be.

This is where things get interesting. Your cells begin to creep and crawl. They form small mounds as they come together and begin holding to each other. These mounds rise like mountains from your sea of cells, growing bigger as time passes. Slowly, recognizable forms begin to take shape. Mouths develop, and small tentacles stretch out into the water. Suddenly little bodies everywhere have regrown. Like Dr. Manhattan from The Watchmen, you’ve pulled yourself back together. And now you are not just one. You are many.  But how did you do this?

How can an animal like Hydra pull off a stunt rarely seen outside Hollywood? This is what a scientist with a knack for grinding Hydra wanted to know. His name is Ulrich Technau, and along with a team of scientists he discovered something extraordinary about these little pond animals. The secret to surviving being blown apart is all about keeping your head.

At least if you’re a Hydra. Your head wasn’t much to look at when you were all put together, a mouth and some tentacles, but it turns out there was more to it than meets the eye. Your head was like a military command center for the rest of your body, constantly sending cellular orders telling your other body parts where to go and what to be. But that was before you were smashed apart. Now your head is totally disintegrated. But if even a few cells keep their identity as head cells, or start acting like they were part of the head (even if they weren’t) that’s all you need. These head cells will begin organizing the cells around them to form a new body.

If you’re a Hydra that’s been pulverized, all you need to come back together, according to Ulrich Technau and the team, is between 5-20 head cells from the command center of your former body. They will take charge, releasing their specialized molecules, like cellular orders, that command other cells to start taking shape. Once a cellular mound has formed around them, it’s just a matter of each member of the mound falling into place, and a new animal is formed.

Because there were many more than 20 cells in the original head, and because these cells will be spread haphazardly around the dish, they will command multiple mounds to form and make new bodies. Where there was one animal, now there are lots.

For the Hydra at least, this neat trick may mean fast recovery from predator attacks in the wild. If even a small piece is left after being eaten alive, there is hope of survival. But does it have any implications for those of us who, as a general rule, do not survive being blown to pieces? If any, the implications are limited. We do not have an organizing center like Hydra (at least not as adults), and so we’re not going to find reassembly quite so easy. Few animals, in fiction or real life, are as lucky as the Hydra, because very few animals can be torn apart and survive.

The post This animal can be torn apart, and will come back together again first appeared on Deep Sea News.

This increase in size within a group animals through time, i.e. larger species and larger species are constantly showing up on the evolutionary state, is a well known rule of biology.  We refer to this pattern as Cope’s Rule, named after an American paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope.  At broad levels, Cope’s Rule is definitely true.  The start of life on this planet was microscopic and now we have whales and redwoods. However, a mixed bag of patterns of increasing, decreasing, and no change is body size is seen in organism as diverse as molluscs and mammals.  Even within a single group like mammals, some groups like rodents show little change with time, while whales get larger with time, and horses get both bigger and smaller.

Godzilla appears to be following Cope’s Rule.  So how big will Godzilla be in 2050?  Rhett Allain at Dot Physics calculates this to be 170 meters.  But I, as nerds debating meaningless things will, disagree.  Allain appears to use multiple dates for each iteration of Godzilla.  For example, the 50 meter Godzilla occurs in movies from 1954-1975 and again in 2001.  In Allain’s plots, 50 meter Godzilla occurs in 1954, 1960, 1970, and 1991.  This artificially weights the analysis and treats separate iterations, i.e. species, of Godzilla the same as a single individual of the same species of Godzilla.  To restate, different sightings, e.g. different movies, of the same individual of Godzilla are put into the analysis multiple times even though they are presumably the same individual. I prefer to use a standard paleontological method, specifically the size at first occurrence.

So redoing the analysis, I first find no actual statistical increase in size with time.  That is because the second smallest Godzilla, 55 meters, did not appear until 1999 (purple dot in the graph), the regression between size and time is not significant with this point included.  I am also not sure why the artist of the plot decided to place the 55 meter purple Godzilla out of temporal order. If purple Godzilla is thrown out of the analysis we get the equation

Log 10 Height = -13.94 + 0.008 Year

So in 2050, I calculate that Godzilla would be 288.4 meters not 170 meters.

So why is Godzilla obtaining ever larger sizes with time?  Skyscrapers.  Skyscraper height has increased dramatically over the last century.  For Godzilla to continue to plow through buildings in major metropolises, a more formidable size is needed.  Of course this size change can only be evolutionarily adaptive if it changes the fitness of Godzilla, i.e. in the simplest case the number of offspring passed to the next generation.  If Godzilla is able to topple buildings this might allow for greater acquisition of resources in this case food in the form of people. This would increase the lifespan of Godzilla allow for more reproduction or allow for greater amount of energy to be passed to the offspring increasing their rate of survival  Or perhaps toppling buildings is a sexual display that sexual partners cue on.  Sexual selection!

Of course the real problem of a 55,000 ton Godzilla is the urine production. Using the handy Kaiju post, we can quickly calculate that, 151,436,928 12,921,400 gallons per day.  That is about 1.8 about quarter of the hold of the largest production oil tankers.

The post The Ever Increasing Size of Godzilla: Implications for Sexual Selection and Urine Production first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Researchers have announced that, thanks to a whole slew of amazing science gadgets, they can now control the jellyfish life cycle, causing mini-jellyfish blooms in the lab anytime they want. This finding is cool enough, but how they did it may be one of the craziest science stories I’ve ever heard. We’re talking Frankeinstein’s jellyfish over here. They used pretty much every awesome science trick in the book (including two rarely combined words: jellyfish and electricity). But before we talk Franken-Jelly and electric shock, let me show you why jellyfish are so damn strange in the first place, and why their life cycle is so difficult to crack.

Jellyfish, most of the time, look nothing like jellyfish. They look like tiny little bread-crumb sized sea anemones.

These “polyps”, as they’re technically (tragically?) called, can hide all over the place; under shells, docks, logs, etc. They’re also really good at copying themselves. One polyp can turn into hundreds over a season by growing and dividing. The best part? Like little living 3D printers, they can churn out copies of their same old polyp body over and over again or they can mix things up and start making a different body: Jellyfish. Jellyfish as we know them start their lives as little jelly rolls (see what I just did there?) on the polyp body.

Each jelly roll develops into a wee jellyfish, which eventually breaks off and swims into the ocean, starting the whole cycle over.

Ever wonder why jellyfish appear only at certain times of the year? One reason is that while being exposed to cold water (like during winter) polyps started churning out jellies. So there is something about cold weather that flips the switch from polyp mode, to jelly mode.

Now, let’s talk Frankenjelly. Scientists wondered if there was a molecule that kicked jelly rolling into gear. Presumably, this molecule is already present in jelly rolls, but not in warm, cozy polyps. Thanks to the polyp’s handy hobby of cloning itself, scientists had a genetically identical collection of polyps to work with. Translation: they could stick pieces of one polyp onto another without any rejection. So, what would happen if, say, you stuck a piece of jelly roll onto a naive polyp? Answer: the host polyp starts making jellies of its own, even though it was never exposed to cold water.

When they stuck polyps onto other polyps, in comparison, nothing happened. Meaning there is something in the jelly roll tissue that can turn on jelly making in polyps. But what is it?

Thanks to gene sequencing, scientists discovered an important clue, a gene called CL390. CL390 codes for a particular protein (a kind of cellular part) that is only present in jelly rolls, appearing for the first time when polyps are placed in cold water. The scientists predicted that, like an inmate stuck in prison, a polyp uses this protein to tick off each day that it’s stuck in cold water. Each “tick” is the production of more CL390 protein. If enough days pass, enough CL390 builds up in the polyp to tip the scale–it freaks out, breaks out, starts forming baby jellyfish. And how do you test this idea? Jellyfish, meet electroshock.

When polyps are zapped with electricity, their cells briefly break open. Not so much to kill the animal, but just enough to let things in and out. Like briefly knocking down the cell’s tightly-held defenses. Place a polyp in a tube with some molecules that prevent CL390 from doing its job (anti-CL390), stick the tube into a tiny electric chamber, zap the crud out of it, and BAM! Now the anti-CL390 molecules that were *outside* the polyp’s cells have been granted uninvited access *in*. And what happens when you introduce anti-CL390 into the polyp cells? Suddenly a polyp about to make jellyfish slows waaay doooowwwwn. If CL390 is like the ticks of a prisoner counting the days in cold water, anti-CL390 sneaks in and erases 60% of those marks. And thus the polyp takes much longer to make jellies.

To celebrate their success, the scientists next went out and bought a bunch of drugs. Then, like any reasonable person with a boatload of drugs, they gave them to polyps. Specifically, they soaked polyps in various drugs that had a similar predicted shape as the mystery CL390 protein. Sure enough, molecules with a special kind of ring structure were able to act like synthetic CL390, kicking polyps into jelly-making mode, cold weather or not. And now scientists have a trick to trip polyps into making jellies any time, anywhere.

Some speculate that this finding may one day give humans the power to control wild jellyfish populations, but I don’t much care for this idea. Humans are clearly in the jelly’s back yard. If we don’t like them, it seems only fair that we modify our behavior, not the other way around. Instead, I love this study for the wonder. That these simple-looking, hypnotic animals have secret, surprisingly complicated lives. And with the right awesome science tools, we can begin to discover their world.

Like this article? Check out the paper here. Want to play with jellyfish genetic data? Check out their database at compagen.org/aurelia

The post Scientists use electricity, drugs, to uncover the secret world of jellyfish first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Well, let’s start with an analogy. Suppose you pick an arbitrary time of day, choose a random subway station in any city, stand at the exit, and pull aside the first 100 people that emerge. You force them to run a marathon—right there, right then. There is no other option. You now have full control over those 100 lives. They’d better start running…or else. (Hey I didn’t say this was going to be an ethical analogy, did I?)

26.2 miles is a grueling distance, even for the most highly trained athlete. Nevermind what that distance might mean for the rotund businessman who faints at the mere sight of a treadmill (hostage #43 in your pack).

Climate change will be equally grueling for corals – human impacts will likely force reef-guiding species to endure oceanic conditions that they’ve never before faced during the history of their time on earth. As the global thermostat creeps ever higher, coral reefs will start singing that Nelly song.

But like our random pack of runners, not all corals start off on equal footing. Thermal stress (a.k.a. its gettin hot in herre) is a serious concern for reefs, since heightened temperatures are one of the main drivers of coral bleaching events. But some corals naturally live in hotter, more variable pools of water, and a new study suggests that these populations may be specifically adapted, at the genomic level, to deal with otherwise challenging temperatures (Barshis et al. 2013).

In other words, out of our 100 hostages, some people might say “&*%# YEAH!” and start running without a second thought (hey, you never know who’s been training for what race). Likewise, some corals have trained their genes to not FREAK OUT when the ambient water temperature is atypically high.

Barshis et al. (2013) looked at a similar situation in two different populations of Acropora hyacinthus, a common reef-building coral inhabiting the waters around Ofu Island, American Samoa:

The backreef environment in Ofu is composed of distinct pools that experience variable levels of temperature, pH, and oxygen driven by tidal fluctuations (26, 38). The most variable of these pools reach ≥34 °C during summer low tides and exhibits daily thermal fluctuations up to 6 °C (26, 38). Corals in the more variable pools show higher stress protein biomarker levels (39), more heattolerant Symbiodinium genotypes (27), faster growth rates (38, 40), and enhanced thermal tolerance (28). [Barshis et al. 2013]

The researchers picked corals from highly variable (HV) and moderately variable (MV, a.k.a less variable) areas of the reef, brought the corals back to the lab, and then in controlled tanks barraged them with some pretty harsh environmental conditions. Barshis et al. (2013) then looked at what genes were expressed in the HV versus MV coral groups:

Under simulated bleaching stress, sensitive and resilient corals change expression of hundreds of genes, but the resilient corals had higher expression under control conditions across 60 of these genes. These “frontloaded” transcripts were less up-regulated in resilient corals during heat stress and included thermal tolerance genes such as heat shock proteins and antioxidant enzymes, as well as a broad array of genes involved in apoptosis regulation, tumor suppression, innate immune response, and cell adhesion. We propose that constitutive frontloading enables an individual to maintain physiological resilience during frequently encountered environmental stress, an idea that has strong parallels in model systems such as yeast. [Barshis et al. 2013]

In other words, some coral genomes appear to be pre-adapted to cope with the environmental stress that coral reefs could face under climate change. That’s not to say that “resilient” corals are immortal – this study only provides a small glimpse at genetic adaptation, and events like coral bleaching can be caused by many different factors.

To add even more complexity, corals have these things called symbionts (Symbiodinium spp.) that live embedded in coral tissue and provide the corals with food. Because they harbor symbionts, corals aren’t just running a marathon – they’re running a marathon with a small child strapped to their back. A small child which can shout in your ear, complain about the bounciness of your running, and ask for a drink of water every half mile. The coral genome has to embark on a cellular response to temperature stress, while simultaneously turning on genes that tell its symbiont to STOP FREAKING OUT! Barshis et al. didn’t look at symbiont gene expression, but ponder whether particular symbiont genomes could contribute to “super corals” that are even more resilient than the populations measured in this study.

This study provides an exciting first glimpse at how corals might adapt to climate change at the cellular level. But alas, as always there are many questions still to be answered: How does the “frontloading” gene expression response happen in normal populations (e.g. not under controlled lab conditions), and how is it turned on over time in response to environmental variation? Given that some of the identified genes are involved in multiple cellular pathways, how do gene expression changes ultimately (and simultaneously) affect both coral health and stress tolerance? We don’t have the answers yet, but more coral genomics work is surely on the horizon!

Reference:

Barshis DJ, Ladner JT, Oliver TA, Seneca FO, Traylor-Knowles N, Palumbi SR. (2013) Genomic basis for coral resilience to climate change. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 110(4):1387–92.

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