Laboratory Culture of Amphioxus for On-Demand Spawning

PI：Nicholas D.Holland Proposal#IOB-0618009文昌鱼的实验室培养用于按需繁殖脊椎动物有许多发育基因，给定的功能通常由几个相关基因执行。因此，如果一个基因被实验失活或自然缺陷，其他几个基因可以覆盖它的功能。这使得很难弄清楚不同基因和它们的功能之间的关系。文昌鱼与脊椎动物关系密切，但发育基因要少得多(约占脊椎动物基因的20%)。因此，文昌鱼是一种很有前途的生物，可以用来研究指导脊椎动物形体计划形成的基因。尽管越来越多的发育生物学家想要研究文昌鱼，但这种动物只在少数几个海洋栖息地存在，一年中有两个月成熟。霍兰德博士希望通过开发具有受控光周期、温度和食物制度的水族馆来扩大文昌鱼的全年用途，从而使文昌鱼能够在远离海岸的实验室进行研究。培养系统的设计是为了方便用户使用，并确保为文昌鱼的分子遗传学研究提供可靠的健康卵子和精子。这些自动化水族箱还将允许文昌鱼突变菌株在实验室中一代又一代地保持下去。霍兰德博士将通过可与目前研究斑马鱼的生物学家的网页相媲美的网页，向发育生物学社区提供建造和维护水族馆以及饲养文昌鱼的指导。

PI: Nicholas D. HollandProposal # IOB-0618009Laboratory Culture of Amphioxus for On-Demand SpawningVertebrates have numerous developmental genes, and a given function is often performed by several related genes. Consequently, if a single gene is experimentally deactivated or naturally defective, several other genes can cover for its function. This makes it hard to work out the relationships between different genes and their functions. Amphioxus is closely related to vertebrates, yet has far fewer developmental genes (~ 20% of vertebrate genes). Amphioxus is therefore a promising organism in which to study the genes that direct the formation of the vertebrate-like body plan. Although an increasing number of developmental biologists would like to study amphioxus, the animals are only available in a few marine habitats and ripe for two months out of the year. Dr. Holland would like to extend the utility of amphioxus through the entire year by developing aquaria with controlled light cycles, temperature and food regimes, thus permitting amphioxus to be studied at laboratories far from sea coasts. The culture system is designed to be user-friendly and to ensure a reliable supply of healthy eggs and sperm for molecular genetic studies of amphioxus. These automated aquaria will also permit mutant amphioxus strains to be maintained from one generation to the next in the laboratory. Dr. Holland will provide instructions for building and maintaining the aquaria and for raising amphioxus to the developmental biology community via web pages comparable to those now available to biologists working on zebrafish.