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FRIMEDBIO-Fri prosj.st. med.,helse,biol

A sucker for taste – Octopus chemotactile sense as a model for molecular evolution and ecological adaptations in marine chemosensory systems

Alternative title: «Sugen på smak – Blekksprutens kjemotaktile sans som en modell for molekylær evolusjon og økologiske tilpasninger for marin luktesans»

Awarded: NOK 8.0 mill.

Octopuses are fascinating animals and with their unique body plan, elaborate nervous system and advanced behavior, they can easily adapt to complex environments, outsmart predators and compete for food resources with large vertebrates. Their adaptability is fueled by the fact that they are incredible sensory specialists that use their arms as sensory sentinels to sample environments inaccessible to traditional senses like vision. Each arm contains not only thousands of sensory cells that can perceive chemical and mechanical information, but also possesses independent ganglia functioning like “mini-brains” that allow the arm to integrate peripheral signals and to carry out autonomous behaviors that are not processed by the brain. In this project, we will leverage these mini-brains as simplified neuronal circuit models, together with the recently discovered octopus chemotactile receptor family (CRs) as a powerful model system to bridge fundamental principles about how chemical signals are perceived, filtered, and encoded with organismal adaptation. Chemical communication is used in a variety of complex behaviors in marine environments, that include microhabitat selection, navigation across large ocean basins, predation, and mate location and animals exhibit a broad range of cellular and molecular adaptations that enable them to detect, filter and process relevant chemical information from their specific ecological niche. Comparing two octopus species with fundamentally distinct live style and anatomy will enable us to provide a solid basis of knowledge about chemosensory processes in aquatic environments, study how chemical coding is achieved and start understanding how it might be distorted by environmental pollution and which potential for adaptation to changing conditions cephalopods possess.

The ability to detect and process salient sensory information from complex and ever-changing environments is crucial to an organism’s survival. Chemical communication is used in a variety of complex behaviors in marine environments, that include microhabitat selection, navigation across large ocean basins, predation, and mate location and animals exhibit a broad range of cellular and molecular adaptations that enable them to detect, filter and process relevant chemical information from their specific ecological niche. Here I propose to leverage a sensory specialist and the recently discovered octopus chemotactile receptor family (CRs) as a powerful model system to bridge fundamental principles of how single proteins transduce and filter chemical signals based on their environmental and cellular context with organismal adaptation. We will perform comparative analysis of octopus protein sequence to learn about functional domains of these proteins and pair this approach with the characterization of cellular properties and neuronal coding across octopus species. The results will provide a foundational basis to study chemical signaling among aquatic organisms. This foundation can then be extended so understand which chemical molecules are employed as info chemicals in species specific environments and how chemical coding might be distorted by environmental pollution. We will use an interdisciplinary approach, that spans from protein structure function analysis over single cell electrophysiology to nervous system coding and natural products identification to further the knowledge in marine invertebrate chemosensation. The project will provide a solid basis of knowledge about these processes in a sensory specialist- a unique opportunity that enables insights into the vast mechanisms of aquatic chemosensation that cannot be easily studied in other systems.

Funding scheme:

FRIMEDBIO-Fri prosj.st. med.,helse,biol

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