Laboratory Culture of Amphioxus for On-Demand Spawning

PI：Nicholas D.荷兰提案# IOB-0618009实验室培养文昌鱼按需产卵脊椎动物有许多发育基因，并且一个给定的功能通常由几个相关基因执行。因此，如果一个基因在实验中失活或自然缺陷，其他几个基因可以取代它的功能。这使得研究不同基因及其功能之间的关系变得困难。 文昌鱼与脊椎动物密切相关，但发育基因少得多（约占脊椎动物基因的20%）。因此文昌鱼是一个很有前途的生物体，研究基因，指导形成脊椎动物般的身体计划。尽管越来越多的发育生物学家希望研究文昌鱼，但这种动物只能在少数海洋栖息地找到，而且一年中只有两个月成熟。荷兰博士希望通过开发具有受控光周期、温度和食物制度的水族箱，将文昌鱼的效用扩展到全年，从而允许在远离海岸的实验室中研究文昌鱼。 该培养系统的设计是用户友好的，并确保可靠的健康卵子和精子的文昌鱼的分子遗传学研究的供应。这些自动化的水族箱也将允许突变文昌鱼菌株在实验室中从一代延续到下一代。霍兰德博士将通过网页向发育生物学界提供建造和维护水族馆以及饲养文昌鱼的说明，这些网页与目前研究斑马鱼的生物学家提供的网页相当。

PI: Nicholas D. HollandProposal # IOB-0618009Laboratory Culture of Amphioxus for On-Demand SpawningVertebrates have numerous developmental genes, and a given function is often performed by several related genes. Consequently, if a single gene is experimentally deactivated or naturally defective, several other genes can cover for its function. This makes it hard to work out the relationships between different genes and their functions. Amphioxus is closely related to vertebrates, yet has far fewer developmental genes (~ 20% of vertebrate genes). Amphioxus is therefore a promising organism in which to study the genes that direct the formation of the vertebrate-like body plan. Although an increasing number of developmental biologists would like to study amphioxus, the animals are only available in a few marine habitats and ripe for two months out of the year. Dr. Holland would like to extend the utility of amphioxus through the entire year by developing aquaria with controlled light cycles, temperature and food regimes, thus permitting amphioxus to be studied at laboratories far from sea coasts. The culture system is designed to be user-friendly and to ensure a reliable supply of healthy eggs and sperm for molecular genetic studies of amphioxus. These automated aquaria will also permit mutant amphioxus strains to be maintained from one generation to the next in the laboratory. Dr. Holland will provide instructions for building and maintaining the aquaria and for raising amphioxus to the developmental biology community via web pages comparable to those now available to biologists working on zebrafish.