头足类衰老适应性进化的遗传基础

衰老研究是生命科学领域的前沿课题之一，每种生物都有其固有的寿命，然而，衰老为何能成为物种或种群的属性？生殖方式对机体的衰老和死亡有什么影响？物种的生殖和衰老模式对种群的进化又有什么贡献？选择恰当的实验动物对研究衰老机理有事半功倍的作用。头足类鞘亚纲的种类具有发育模式完善而高级、个体生命周期短、生殖方式简单（终生仅繁殖一次）、生殖完成后即行死亡等特征，是研究生殖、衰老和死亡的良好材料。据此，本项申请拟以金乌贼为研究对象，从个体、细胞和分子三个水平上分析衰老过程中形态学、组织学和细胞学特征变化规律，探讨衰老的细胞调控模式和基因调控模式，认识头足类生殖方式和衰老模式之间相互作用关系，为揭示头足类的衰老适应性进化机制、阐明生活史策略对其群体补充所发挥的作用提供依据；此外，相关研究结果可望为研究衰老进化提供新的思路和实验模型，为探究物种的起源、进化、退化、灭绝机制提供新的视角。

Aging research is one of the frontier subjects in the field of life science. Every living organism has its own life-span. While，why aging could be the attribute of species or population? What is the relationship between reproduction and aging? And what does reproduction and aging pattern of species contribute to the evolution of the population? Selecting the right animal model is of great importance for studying the mechanism of aging. Coleoidea subclass (Cephalopod) has the characteristics of perfect and advanced development patterns such as short individual life cycle, simple reproduction (once reproduction within whole life-span) and natural death shortly after completing reproduction. This application intends to use Sepia esculenta (Cephalopoda: Coleoidea) as a target species to observe the morphology, histological and cytological changes, cell regulation pattern and gene regulation pattern in the aging process. The results of this study would be helpful for understanding the relationship between reproductive and aging patterns for cephalopod, and be valuable for clarifying the mechanism of aging adaptive evolution of cephalopod. It could provide an important theoretical basis to clarify the role of the life history strategy for the population recruitment. This study could also provide new ideas and experimental models to reveal the evolution of aging, and provide a new perspective to explore the species origin, evolution, extinction, degradation mechanism.