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取决于一系列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、重复使用、调整甚至有时丢失的方式，鲜为人知，但对于理解动物如何在不同的环境中生存和茁壮成长至关重要。大多数感觉细胞的特征是复杂的形状和分子机制，在过去的几十年中首次被细致的电子显微镜发现。最近，这已经通过在各种动物模型中对其发育和分化的遗传研究得到了补充。然而，这两个研究项目在很大程度上仍然是独立的，并且缺乏对动物感觉细胞多样性如何进化的统一形态学和分子理解。我们在ZooCELL的目标是建立一个全面的观点的感觉细胞类型的进化的基础上发现的遗传和亚细胞结构的复发模式在广泛的新的动物模型。为此，我们将结合联合收割机单细胞基因组学，相关的光学和电子显微镜，人工智能，和反向遗传学的方法在这些物种。ZooCELL将汇集欧洲在这些学科的世界领先的专业知识，从而有助于建立动物比较综合细胞生物学领域。在培养下一代博士生这些新的跨学科技术的同时，我们将开发新的工具，用于细胞类型的分子和形态学比较分析。我们的跨学科、跨部门和国际培训方案还将包括传播和公共宣传，所提供的全面培训将使我们的研究生能够在学术界、工业界和科学宣传方面发挥领导作用。

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.