Genomic insights into the sessile life and biofouling of barnacles (Crustacea: Cirripedia)

Abstract

Members of the infraclass Cirripedia, commonly called barnacles, are unique among the subphylum Crustacea in that they exhibit a biphasic life cycle with a planktonic larval stage and a sessile adult stage. Understanding their unique sessile life and mechanisms of attachment are hampered by the lack of genomic resources. Here, we present a 746 Mb genome assembly of Lepas anserifera – the first sequenced stalked barnacle genome. We estimate that Cirripedia first arose ~495 million years ago (MYA) and further diversified since Mesozoic. A demographic analysis revealed remarkable population changes of the barnacle in relation to sea-level fluctuations in the last 2 MYA. Comparative genomic analyses revealed the expansion of a number of developmental related genes families in barnacle genomes, such as Br–C, PCP20 and Lola, which are potentially important for the evolution of metamorphosis, cuticle development and central nervous system. Phylogenetic analysis and tissue expression profiling showed the possible roles of gene duplication, functional diversification and co-option in shaping the genomic evolution of barnacles. Overall, our study provides not only a valuable draft genome for comparative genomic analysis of crustacean evolution, but also facilitates studies of biofouling control.

Thermal heterogeneity is an important factor for maintaining the genetic differentiation pattern of the pelagic barnacle Lepas anatifera in the northwest Pacific

“…The quality of the sequence data was assessed with fastp software (Chen et al, 2018 ). The genome of L. anserifera (Cirripedia, Lepadidae) (Ip et al, 2021 ) was used as a reference genome and clean data were aligned to the genome with BWA (Li & Durbin, 2010 ). SNP calling was conducted using Samtools (Danecek et al, 2021 ) and the outputs were put into gstacks program (−‐rm‐unpaired‐reads) in Stacks to build loci and identify SNPs by incorporating paired‐end reads.…”

Recent advances in crustacean genomics and their potential application in aquaculture

“…46 Besides, the expansion and specific expression of genes in the peduncle of stalked barnacles are suggested to contribute to the permanent attachment of Lepas anserifera. 22 Parasitic lifestyle: Several classes of Crustacea contain parasites, including Cirripedia, Copepoda and Malacostraca, which are critical players in aquatic ecosystem dynamics. 91 Comparative genomics has demonstrated that parasites exhibit an apparently reduced number of protein-coding genes compared to free-living species.…”

“…Only four species of Thoracica and one species of Rhizocephala have published genomes (Table 1). These four economic species of Thoracica include two sessile barnacles ( Amphibalanus amphitrite and Semibalanus balanoides ) and two stalked barnacles ( Pollicipes pollicipes and Lepas anserifera ) with contig or scaffold N50 lengths ranging from 56 Kb to 670 Kb 21–23 …”

Identification of Hox genes and their expression profiles during embryonic development of the emerging model organism, Macrobrachium olfersii

“…In addition, changes in Hox gene expression have generated morphological differences between Crustacean species, which could be responsible for the evolutionary history of this group (Abzhanov & Kaufman, 2000a, 2000bAverof & Patel, 1997;Liubicich et al, 2009;Martin et al, 2016). Ten Hox genes has been identified in crustaceans, such as in Litopenaeus vannamei (Sun et al, 2015), Penaeus monodon (Uengwetwanit et al, 2021), Daphnia pulex, and Daphnia magna (D. H. Kim et al, 2018;Pace et al, 2016), while nine Hox genes have been identified in Paracyclopina nana (H. S. Kim et al, 2016), Exapalomon carinicauda (Yuan et al, 2017), P. hawaiensis (Serano et al, 2016), and Lepas anserifera (Ip et al, 2021). However, the identification and expression of Hox genes during development of crustacean decapods has been limited to P. hawaiensis (Martin et al, 2016), Procambarus clarkii (Abzhanov & Kaufman, 2000a, 2000b, L. vannamei (Li et al, 2012;Sun et al, 2015), and Eriocheir sinensis (Cui et al, 2021).…”

“…Ten Hox genes has been identified in crustaceans, such as in Litopenaeus vannamei (Sun et al, 2015), Penaeus monodon (Uengwetwanit et al, 2021), Daphnia pulex , and Daphnia magna (D. H. Kim et al, 2018; Pace et al, 2016), while nine Hox genes have been identified in Paracyclopina nana (H. S. Kim et al, 2016), Exapalomon carinicauda (Yuan et al, 2017), P . hawaiensis (Serano et al, 2016), and Lepas anserifera (Ip et al, 2021). However, the identification and expression of Hox genes during development of crustacean decapods has been limited to P .…”