LiT: Rel Homology Domain Signal Transduction Pathways in the Sea Anemone Nematostella vectensis

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The survival of all organisms depends on their ability to manage environmental stress, whether caused by physical (e.g., heat, oxygen, chemicals) or biological (e.g., pathogens) insult. Many animals, including insects and vertebrates, respond to a wide range of environmental stresses by activating a conserved molecular pathway, called the NF-kappaB transcription factor signal transduction pathway. Although the NF-kappaB pathway is critical for many higher animal stress response systems, its evolutionary origins are obscure. In the current project, genes encoding many key proteins similar to the human NF-kappaB pathway have been identified and cloned in a simple marine organism, the starlet sea anemone Nematostella vectensis (phylum Cnidaria). This project involves interdisciplinary research between a molecular evolutionary biologist (Finnerty) and a cell & molecular biologist (Gilmore) that seeks to gain insights into the ancestral function of the NF-kappaB signaling pathway, and the biological and ecological significance of a gene variant of NF-kappaB that exists in wild populations of Nematostella. Specifically, this research is investigating how NF-kappaB functions in simple marine animals, and three major experimental aims will be accomplished. (1) NF-kappaB signaling proteins are being characterized in the sea anemone Nematostella using a variety of molecular, cellular, and whole animal assays. (2) Genes regulated by NF-kappaB and stressors that can activate NF-kappaB and its target genes will be identified in Nematostella. (3) The functional and selective consequences of gene variants of the NF-kappaB protein of Nematostella will be determined. Broader ImpactsThe research will lead to a better understanding of the evolutionary origins of the stress response pathways of contemporary animals, and a better understanding of how these pathways can evolve in response to environmental change (climatic shifts, new physical/chemical insults, novel pathogens). The research program will have three major broader impacts. It will provide interdisciplinary training in cell and molecular biology, evolutionary biology, genomics, and developmental biology to students at the PhD and undergraduate levels, including students from groups that are under-represented in science. It will augment three heavily utilized Internet databases that serve a broad research community: StellaBase (http://stellabase.org); The Nematostella Web Resource (http://nematostella.org); and Rel/NF-kappaB Transcription Factors (http://www.nf-kb.org). It will contribute to ongoing marine conservation efforts by identifying molecular markers for environmental stressors. Such information may better enable conservation scientists to monitor the biological effects of environmental threats impacting indicator species in key coastal habitats, such as the coastal estuaries inhabited by the sea anemone Nematostella.