Photosignal transduction and circadian systems in deep-sea fishes

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26650108
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Morphology/Structure
• Research Institution: Utsunomiya University
• Principal Investigator: Iigo Masayuki 宇都宮大学, 農学部, 教授 (10232109)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): MIYAMOTO Norio 独立行政法人海洋研究開発機構, 海洋・極限環境生物圏領域, 研究員 (20612237)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 深海魚 / 光受容体 / 体内時計 / 時計遺伝子

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Deep sea is an extreme environment for living organisms and is one of the frontiers on the earth to be explored. Do physiology and behavior of deep sea organisms exhibit circadian rhythms? To answer this question, we analyzed photosignal transduction and circadian systems in deep-sea fishes.
We used seven species of deep-sea fish kindly supplied by JAMSTEC and Kanagawa Prefectural Marine Science High School for mRNA-seq analyses on brain and retina. We identified mRNAs encoding photosingal transduction-related genes including several opsins, G proteins, and cGMP-gated channels. Furthermore, we successfully identified several clock genes.

Free Research Field

時間生物学，光ゲノム生命化学