卤虫在极端环境适应过程中的自噬作用及其调控机制

在极端环境的长期胁迫下，卤虫通过卵生途径产生休眠卵，其细胞内的新陈代谢处于完全停滞状态，细胞周期停滞在G1/S 期。卤虫这种对环境适应的特殊生命过程的分子机制至今尚未被阐明。我们的前期研究发现，在卤虫这一特殊的生命过程中，自噬作用及其调控机制起了重要的作用。在卤虫休眠卵中，AMPK处于高度激活状态，TOR处于低活性状态，但是自噬却几乎不发生，这与通常的自噬调控有着明显的不同。本项目将以卤虫的休眠卵为研究对象，系统地研究在卤虫休眠卵形成以及维持过程中自噬过程的变化情况，解析卤虫休眠卵中自噬调控的关键分子和信号通路。卤虫的休眠卵是极端环境下非常特殊的一种生命个体形式，对其自噬调控机制的研究，对揭示极端环境胁迫下生物特征性应对机制以及生物对环境的适应性进化具有重要的意义。

To cope with enviromental stresses, Artemia release diapause embryos by the oviparous pathway. These embryos have a low metabolic rate and complete turnoff of replication, transcription and translation. Cell cycles are all arrested at G1/S phase inside the embryo.The mechanism of this specific adaptive mechanism of Artemia is still unclear. According to our previous study, we found that autophagy play important roles in this adaptive process in Artemia. It was found that inside the diapause embryo AMPK was active and TOR was inactive, which was suggested to be a stimulius signal according to the known regulation mechanism of autophagy.But no autophagosome could be found when this embryo was analysed under TEM.Thus there might have a special mechanism of autophagy inside the embryo of Artemia.In the present research, we will focuse on the autophagy process aimed to clarify the detailed regulation mechanism of autophagy inside the diapause embryo of Artemia. Our result would be greatly helpful to understand the adaptive mechnism under extreme enviroment.