Project description
Brain evolution in mayflies
The evolution of the brain has significantly contributed to the diversity of the animal kingdom, facilitating major changes, such as terrestrial adaptation and social behaviour, as well as developmental transitions. In certain animals, brain evolution has led to advanced cognitive functions while in others such as insects, it has provided sensory processing and navigation. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the MAYBRAIN project will investigate brain remodelling in the mayfly Cloeon dipterum to understand its impact on wing development, on the transition to aerial life, and on sexual dimorphism. The idea is to create a comprehensive gene expression atlas and establish C. dipterum as a model for studying insect brains.
Objective
The evolution of the brain deeply transformed the animal kingdom leading to extraordinary animal diversity. Brain evolution and plasticity were necessary for many major evolutionary changes (e.g. terrestrialization of tetrapods, evolution of sociality) as well as developmental changes within an organism's life span (e.g. metamorphosis). In this project, I propose to study the brain remodeling in the mayfly Cloeon dipterum whose biology has the advantage of offering us multiple perspectives and insights on brain plasticity:
(i) evolutionary perspective: mayflies are part of the insect lineage in which wings originated. This project will shed light on brain processes controlling wings and flight.
(ii) developmental perspective: mayflies are hemimetabolous insects that present a gradual metamorphosis that nonetheless accompanies a major lifestyle transition from an aquatic juvenile form to an aerial winged adult.
(iii) sexual dimorphism: the species C. dipterum displays significant sexual dimorphism as males have an extra pair of eyes (turbanate eyes), whose sensory signals need to be processed by the brain.
Using a combination of single cell transcriptomics (sc-RNA-seq), in situ hybridisations and drug treatments, this project will yield a gene expression atlas of the brain of C. dipterum separately for both male and female individuals, across multiple points of its life cycle (two nymphal stages and two adult stages). This atlas will give us information on the brain processes necessary for the water to land evolutionary transition, those associated with flight and the acquisition of wings and those underlying the appearance of a new sensory organ - the turbanate eyes - in males, with the data conveniently navigable along annotated chromosomes. This study will also establish C. dipterum as a model for studying hemimetabolous insect brains and provide a reference for future studies.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesevolutionary biology
- natural sciencesbiological scienceszoologyentomology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesgeneticschromosomes
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
08007 Barcelona
Spain