Mechanisms of maternal inheritance of developmental buffering

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K15167
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Evolutionary biology
• Research Institution: Ochanomizu University
• Principal Investigator: Sato Atsuko お茶の水女子大学, 基幹研究院, 助教 (90589433)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-04-01 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: 発生のロバストネス / 発生緩衝 / カタユウレイボヤ / 母性効果

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This project aims to investigate the molecular basis of developmental buffering by comparing two types of cross hybridization of sibling species in Ciona intestinalis adapted to different seawater temperatures. By comparing transcriptomes of heat treated early tailbud embryos, dozens of genes were inferred to be involved in developmental buffering (here we entitled ‘developmental buffering genes’ (DBG)). We undertook imbalance analysis in which we identified SNP origin in each transcript. We found that nearly 40% of DBGs showing imbalance in expression. We also conducted comparisons of egg transcriptomes and epigenome sequencing (ATAC-Seq) from heat treated early tailbud embryos. Nearly half of the DBGs showing imbalance are expressed differently between type A and type B eggs. We also conducted functional screening of 12 DnaJ genes in C. elegans using RNAi. We found that most of the ER-associated DnaJ chaperones are involved in developmental buffering.

Free Research Field

環境発生進化学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

生物の発生は、遺伝子型や環境の影響を緩衝し、一定に保たれている。このため、遺伝型から発生を予測することが現在でも困難である。例えば、ゲノム中に病気の原因となる遺伝子を持っていたとしても、その病気を発症するとは限らない。どのような場合に発症するのか、そのしくみが理解されれば、大病を未然に防いだり、地球環境の変動下でどのような病気が起こるかを予測したり、もしくは環境の変動による生物の進化を予測することも可能になるだろう。本研究は、ゲノムレベルで発生緩衝に関する分子を明らかにした。