海洋膜口类纤毛虫的多样性、超微结构与条形码基因建库

以草履虫、四膜虫为代表的膜口类纤毛虫原生动物是环境生物学、进化生物学、遗传学等研究领域的重要模式生物。由于多种原因，国内外在海洋生境中，围绕膜口类这一纤毛虫大类群的多样性、细胞学及系统学的研究迄今甚少。本项目拟综合利用电镜、经典分类学及分子手段，聚焦长江口近海各类生境中的膜口类纤毛虫，核心内容包括：（1）基于现代分类学手段发现和报道未知物种多样性，厘清历史遗留的分类学混乱，并初步构建相关的条形码基因数据库；（2）揭示关键种类的细胞超微结构，探讨存疑阶元、具有演化意义的形态结构特征在细胞器亚显微水平上的演化规律；（3）在此基础上，综合形态及分子信息，完成膜口类系统关系厘定和构建。本项目为国际间首次聚焦海洋膜口类开展的多角度研究，将填补纤毛虫原生动物分类学和系统学研究的空缺；所形成的具有多重意义的第一手资讯，将为海洋生态学、环境生物学及生物多样性等研究领域提供亟需的科学依据。

Represented by Paramecium and Tetrahymena, the hymenostomatid ciliates are important model organisms in many fields, eg., environmental biology, evolutionary biology and genetics. For various reasons, studies involving biodiversity, cytology and systematics for marine hymenostomatids have not been carried out within the international scope. This project intends to make use of electron microscopy, classical taxonomy and molecular means to focus on the hymenostomatids from various offshore habitats near the Yangtze Estuary. The core contents include: (1) discovering and reporting unknown species biodiversity and clarifying the historical legacy of chaos based on modern taxonomic standard, and preliminary constructing DNA barcodes database; (2) revealing the ultrastructure of key species, and to explore the evolution rules of significant morphological structure and taxa with systematics doubt from the sub-microscopical level; (3) on this basis, to accomplish systematics amending using combined information of morphology and molecular phylogeny. This project will be the first multi-angle study on marine hymenostomatids ciliates, and will fill the gaps in the taxonomy and systematics of ciliated protozoa. It will obtain the first-hand scientific information which is with multiple meanings, and it will also benefit many research fields including marine ecology, environmental biology and biodiversity by providing the urgently needed scientific basis.