Laboratory Culture of Amphioxus for On-Demand Spawning

文昌鱼按需产卵的实验室培养

• 批准号: 0618009
• 负责人: Nicholas Holland
• 金额: $ 16.9万
• 依托单位: University of California-San Diego Scripps Inst of Oceanography
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-08-01 至 2009-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0618009&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Laboratory; Culture; Amphioxus; Demand; Spawning

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.

文昌鱼按需产卵的实验室培养脊椎动物有许多发育基因，一个特定的功能通常由几个相关的基因完成。因此，如果一个基因在实验上失活或自然缺陷，其他几个基因可以弥补它的功能。这使得研究不同基因及其功能之间的关系变得困难。文昌鱼与脊椎动物关系密切，但发育基因却少得多（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身体结构形成的基因。尽管越来越多的发育生物学家喜欢研究文昌鱼，但这种动物只在少数海洋栖息地出现，一年只有两个月成熟。霍兰德博士希望通过开发控制光照周期、温度和食物制度的水族馆，将文文鱼的效用扩展到全年，从而使文文鱼能够在远离海岸的实验室中进行研究。该培养系统设计为用户友好型，并确保为文昌鱼的分子遗传研究提供健康的卵子和精子的可靠供应。这些自动化水族箱也将允许突变文昌鱼株从一代维持到下一代在实验室。霍兰德博士将通过与目前从事斑马鱼研究的生物学家类似的网页，向发育生物学社区提供建造和维护水族馆以及饲养文文鱼的指导。