2020 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Feeding regulation in jellyfish
| Project/Area Number |
20K15838
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| Research Institution | Tohoku University |
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Principal Investigator |
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| Project Period (FY) |
2020-04-01 – 2022-03-31
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| Keywords | Jellyfish / Cnidarian / Feeding / Appetite / Drosophila / Neuropeptide / Evolution |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
The main achievements of this research project so far are as follows: (a) We screened several jellyfish candidate peptides and identified five that robustly inhibit the amount of food ingested in Cladonema pacificum; (b) We characterized in detail the expression pattern and/or specific behavioral effects of some of these five peptides; (c) We chose to focus on one of these peptides as it has a known homolog in the fruit fly Drosophila. Using the Drosophila genetic toolkit, as well as other strategies, we showed that the jellyfish and the fruit fly peptides are fully exchangeable in inhibiting feeding.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
The results obtained with one of the identified peptides were clear and straightforward to interpret. We are currently at the stage where we have written a manuscript about this peptide and submitted it for publication.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
Future research will focus on characterizing the other feeding-inhibiting peptides we identified. Moreover, additional experiments requested by the reviewers of our manuscript may be necessary.
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| Causes of Carryover |
Because we focused primarily on one of five identified peptides, additional funds will be used for experiments with the other peptides in the next fiscal year. Moreover, some of these additional funds will go towards the experiments requested by reviewers for our manuscript.
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