BIO Seminar: Patricia Álvarez-Campos

Investigating the molecular bases of annelid reproduction, regeneration and stem cells dynamics through single-cell transcriptomics

Speaker: Dr. Patricia Álvarez-Campos, Université Paris Diderot, France

Host: Katrine Worsaa, Marine Biology Section

Abstract
Regeneration, the ability to replace lost body parts, is a widespread phenomenon in the animal kingdom that has been studied by biologists for a long time in a wide range of animals. This ability has been often connected to asexual reproduction, since the only difference between them appear to be the stimulus triggering them. It has been proposed that asexual reproduction is a novel trajectory that evolved numerous times among animal phyla through the co-option of the regeneration process. But, which are the molecular mechanisms regulating these processes and how did they evolve over time remain largely unsolved questions. Annelid worms are one of the best models to investigate both mechanisms since most of the species can regenerate at least some parts of their bodies and they present a huge variability to reproduce both sexually and asexually. However, it is still unclear the molecular toolkit underlying all these processes and the cellular source involved on them. Two alternative models of regeneration exist (through stem cells or through the de-differentiation of mature cells) and the novel high-throughput methods of single-cell transcriptomics can reconstruct the dynamics of the different cell populations. Using this novel approach in several species of marine, freshwater and terrestrial annelids, my project aims to understand the molecular and cellular bases of regeneration and reproduction developmental trajectories, to gain insight into their evolution within metazoans.