Fatty acid bioconversion in harpacticoid copepods in a changing environment: a transcriptomic approach

Boyen, Jens; Fink, Patrick; Mensens, Christoph; Hablützel, Pascal I.; Troch, Marleen De

doi:10.1101/797753

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 64 publications

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“…Lineage-specific duplications have played a major role in the distributions of elongases and desaturases in a variety of taxa (Ishikawa et al, 2019;Surm et al, 2015;Surm et al, 2018), and copy number expansion of ELOVs has been suggested to contribute to the ability of some harpacticoid copepods to synthesize long-chain fatty acids (Boyen et al, 2019). Higher copy numbers might facilitate the production of OSC species' enormous lipid stores, while diversifying selection implies that some duplicated gene copies have evolved new functions such as distinct substrate specificities, as has occurred with vertebrate elongases (Castro et al, 2016).…”

Section: Implications For the Evolution Of The Oil-sac Clade (Osc)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring circadian rhythms, food intake, and their interactions in marine invertebrates

Berger

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Circadian rhythms and energy metabolism are critical and interconnected components of animal physiology. Metabolic inputs like time of feeding modulate circadian clocks and behavioral and molecular rhythms. In turn, circadian clocks regulate metabolic processes, allowing animals to optimize energy usage on daily timescales. On longer timescales, animals require physiological responses to tolerate variation in food availability. Most of our mechanistic knowledge of these processes comes from terrestrial mammals and insects, while there are major knowledge gaps for marine invertebrates. My dissertation focuses on the interactions of circadian rhythms and metabolism in three marine invertebrate systems using a combination of behavioral, molecular, and bioinformatic approaches. In Chapter 2, to understand how sensory signals are integrated into circadian clocks, I test the effects of various light and temperature regimes on circadian rhythms in the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis. Misaligned light and temperature cycles severely disrupt behavioral rhythms and substantially alter the rhythmic transcriptome, particularly the expression of genes mediating metabolic processes. This illustrates how interactions between environmental cues shape circadian behavior and physiology. In Chapter 3, I develop a high-throughput behavioral system to study diel vertical migration (DVM) in the copepod Acartia tonsa. DVM is driven by tradeoffs related to food availability, but we do not fully understand how food availability affects this circadian process. Using high-resolution tracking software, I find that Acartia possesses group-level DVM-like circadian rhythms in the lab, and that these swimming rhythms are altered by time-restricted feeding. This illustrates that food availability can impact DVM via effects on circadian clocks. In Chapter 4, I analyze how polar copepods respond to starvation at the molecular level. I find that two species with distinct dietary strategies partially share a genetic toolkit to respond to starvation, whereas differences in their starvation responses may reflect different modes of lipid storage. I also use evolutionary analyses to show that starvation response genes are under selective constraint, underlining their importance to organismal fitness. In aggregate, this thesis provides insights into the circadian rhythms of marine organisms, explores how metabolism modulates circadian rhythms, and sheds lights on the physiological consequences of food availability in zooplankton.

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Section: Implications For the Evolution Of The Oil-sac Clade (Osc)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring circadian rhythms, food intake, and their interactions in marine invertebrates

Berger

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Comparative analysis of the molecular starvation response of Southern Ocean copepods

Berger,

Steinberg,

Copeman

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Large lipid-storing copepods dominate mesozooplankton biomass in the polar oceans and form a critical link between primary production and higher trophic levels. The ecological success of these species depends on their ability to survive periods of food deprivation in a highly seasonal environment, but the molecular changes that mediate starvation tolerance in these taxa are unknown. We conducted starvation experiments for two dominant Southern Ocean copepods, Calanoides acutus and Calanus propinquus, allowing us to compare the molecular starvation response between species. These species differ in life history, diet, and metabolic traits, and expressed overlapping but distinct transcriptomic responses to starvation. Most starvation-response genes were species-specific, but we identified a conserved core set of starvation-response genes related to RNA and protein metabolism. We used phylotranscriptomics to place these results in the context of copepod evolution and found that starvation-response genes are under strong purifying selection at the sequence level and stabilizing selection at the expression level, consistent with their role in mediating essential biological functions. Selection on starvation-response genes was especially strong in our focal lipid-storing lineage relative to other copepod taxa, underscoring the significance of starvation tolerance for these species. We also found that certain key lipid enzymes (elongases and desaturases) have experienced diversification and positive selection in lipid-storing lineages, reflecting the unique lipid storage needs of these animals. Our results shed light on the molecular adaptations of high-latitude zooplankton to variable food conditions, and suggest that starvation-response genes are under particularly strong sequence and expression constraints.

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The evolutionary ecology of fatty‐acid variation: Implications for consumer adaptation and diversification

et al. 2021

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The nutritional diversity of resources can affect the adaptive evolution of consumer metabolism and consumer diversification. The omega‐3 long‐chain polyunsaturated fatty acids eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA; 20:5n‐3) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA; 22:6n‐3) have a high potential to affect consumer fitness, through their widespread effects on reproduction, growth and survival. However, few studies consider the evolution of fatty acid metabolism within an ecological context. In this review, we first document the extensive diversity in both primary producer and consumer fatty acid distributions amongst major ecosystems, between habitats and amongst species within habitats. We highlight some of the key nutritional contrasts that can shape behavioural and/or metabolic adaptation in consumers, discussing how consumers can evolve in response to the spatial, seasonal and community‐level variation of resource quality. We propose a hierarchical trait‐based approach for studying the evolution of consumers’ metabolic networks and review the evolutionary genetic mechanisms underpinning consumer adaptation to EPA and DHA distributions. In doing so, we consider how the metabolic traits of consumers are hierarchically structured, from cell membrane function to maternal investment, and have strongly environment‐dependent expression. Finally, we conclude with an outlook on how studying the metabolic adaptation of consumers within the context of nutritional landscapes can open up new opportunities for understanding evolutionary diversification.

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Fatty acid bioconversion in harpacticoid copepods in a changing environment: a transcriptomic approach

Cited by 3 publications

References 64 publications

Exploring circadian rhythms, food intake, and their interactions in marine invertebrates

Exploring circadian rhythms, food intake, and their interactions in marine invertebrates

Comparative analysis of the molecular starvation response of Southern Ocean copepods

The evolutionary ecology of fatty‐acid variation: Implications for consumer adaptation and diversification

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