Platynereis dumerilii as a functional molecular model organism for circalunar clock analyses

Authors: Kristin Tessmar-Raible

Affiliations:

1 Department of Neuroscience and Developmental Biology, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Vienna, Austria

2 Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Am Handelshafen 12, 27570 Bremerhaven, Germany

3 Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM), School of Mathematics and Science, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Ammerländer Heerstraße 114-118, 26129 Oldenburg, Germany

Abstract:

Since its beginnings, life has been exposed to the regular environmental cycles caused by sun and moon, requiring adjustments of physiology and behavior. Especially in the marine environment – considered to be the cradle of evolution – a rich body of literature describes endogenous organismal rhythms that are not linked to the solar, but to the lunar cycle. These rhythms have considerable impact, ranging from behavioral and physiological control to ecosystem organization.

The marine bristle worm Platynereis dumerilii possesses a circalunar oscillator that is phase-synchronized by dim nocturnal light. Building on work from the1960ies, my lab (collaborating with others) establishes this species as a model for circalunar clock analyses. Besides the published work on transgenesis, conditional cell ablations, reverse genetics via TALENs and Cas9/Crispr, transcriptomic and proteomic resources, long-term and high resolution measurements of sun- and moonlight at the natural habitat, illumination devices mimicking sun- and moonlight, automated behavioral recordings/analyses, immunohistochemistry, TUNEL, HCR-based RNA in situ hybridization, I can report on our recent established larval deep-freezing for long-term strain storage, genome editing by Cas9-deaminase, as well as the chromosome-scale genome from a highly inbred lab strain and a recent wild-type isolate.

Scientifically, some recent question we have been tackling are: How can different worms across a population reliably synchronize to the same moon phase? Does lunar timing influence daily timing? And can the study of molecular timing mechanisms of marine bristle worms help to understand some of the scientifically reported, but “just weird” correlations between human physiological/behavioral rhythms and the lunar cycle?