Tracing the evolution of sensory cell types in animal diversity: multidisciplinary training in 3D cellular reconstruction, multimodal data analysis

所有动物都需要感知环境。感知光、温度、化学物质、声音、振动和其他刺激的能力依赖于非常广泛的感觉细胞类型。动物门中这些受体细胞之间的多样性和关系，以及它们被适应、再利用、调整和有时丢失的方式，人们知之甚少，但对于理解动物如何在不同的环境中生存和繁衍至关重要。大多数感觉细胞的特征是复杂的形状和分子机制，这是在过去几十年里通过精密的电子显微镜首次发现的。最近，在各种动物模型中对其发育和分化的遗传研究补充了这一点。然而，这两个研究项目在很大程度上仍然是分开的，对动物感觉细胞的多样性是如何进化的，缺乏统一的形态学和分子认识。我们在ZooCELL的目标是在发现遗传和亚细胞结构的循环模式的基础上，在广泛的新动物模型中创建一个全面的感觉细胞类型进化视图。为此，我们将在这些物种中结合单细胞基因组学，相关光学和电子显微镜，人工智能和反向遗传学方法。ZooCELL将汇集欧洲在这些学科方面的世界领先的专业知识，从而为建立动物比较综合细胞生物学领域做出贡献。在培养新一代跨学科技术的博士生的同时，我们将开发新的工具来结合细胞类型的分子和形态比较分析。我们的跨学科、跨部门和国际培训计划也将包括宣传和公众外展，所提供的全面培训将使我们的研究生在学术界、工业界和科学外展方面担任领导角色。

All animals need to sense their environments. The ability to detect light, temperature, chemicals, sound, vibrations and other stimuli depends on an extraordinary range of sensory cell types. The diversity and relationships between these receptor cells across the animal phyla, the ways in which they have been adapted, reused, tweaked and sometimes lost, is little known, but is crucial for understanding how animals survive and thrive in diverse environments. Most sensory cells are characterised by complex shapes and molecular machinery, first discovered by meticulous electron microscopy in the past decades. More recently, this has been complemented by genetic studies of their development and differentiation in various animal models. These two research programmes have, however, largely remained separate, and a unified morphological and molecular understanding of how the diversity of animal sensory cells has evolved is lacking. Our aim in ZooCELL is to create a comprehensive view of sensory cell type evolution based on the discovery of recurrent patterns of genetic and subcellular structure across a wide range of new animal models. To this end, we will combine single-cell genomics, correlative light and electron microscopy, Artificial Intelligence, and reverse genetics approaches in these species. ZooCELL will bring together Europe's world-leading expertise in these disciplines, and thuscontribute to building the field of comparative integrative cell biology in animals. While training the next generation of doctoral students in these novel interdisciplinary techniques, we will develop new tools for combined molecular and morphological comparative analyses of cell types. Our interdisciplinary, intersectoral and international training programme will also include dissemination and public outreach, and the comprehensive training provided will enable our graduate students to assume leadership roles in academia, industry and science outreach.