Cell Adhesion and Communication: A Lesson from Echinoderm Embryos for the Exploitation of New Therapeutic Tools

Zito, Francesca; Costa, Caterina; Sciarrino, Serafina; Cavalcante, Carmela; Poma, Veronica; Matranga, Valeria

doi:10.1007/3-540-27683-1_2

Cited by 15 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 166 publications

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“…However, echinoderms have been used for decades in the evaluation of marine pollutant's toxicity such as heavy metals (Ablanedo et al 1990;Lesser et al 2003;Lisette Vega and Epel 2004;Filisto et al 2008;Hernández et al 2009). They represent prime candidates for model toxicological test organisms in the marine ecosystem for several reasons, including their ecological relevance, benthic and relatively sedimentary lifestyle, susceptibility to the presence of micropollutants stored in marine sediments, rapid response and high sensitivity to many types of contaminants (Zito et al 2005;Bellas 2008).…”

Section: Echinoderms As Models For Ecotoxicologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of near-future ocean acidification on echinoderms

2010

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As a consequence of increasing atmospheric CO(2), the world's oceans are warming and slowly becoming more acidic (ocean acidification, OA) and profound changes in marine ecosystems are certain. Calcification is one of the primary targets for studies of the impact of CO(2)-driven climate change in the oceans and one of the key marine groups most likely to be impacted by predicted climate change events are the echinoderms. Echinoderms are a vital component of the marine environment with representatives in virtually every ecosystem, where they are often keystone ecosystem engineers. This paper reviews and analyses what is known about the impact of near-future ocean acidification on echinoderms. A global analysis of the literature reveals that echinoderms are surprisingly robust to OA and that important differences in sensitivity to OA are observed between populations and species. However, this is modulated by parameters such as (1) exposure time with rare longer term experiments revealing negative impacts that are hidden in short or midterm ones; (2) bottlenecks in physiological processes and life-cycle such as stage-specific developmental phenomena that may drive the whole species responses; (3) ecological feedback transforming small scale sub lethal effects into important negative effects on fitness. We hypothesize that populations/species naturally exposed to variable environmental pH conditions may be pre-adapted to future OA highlighting the importance to understand and monitor environmental variations in order to be able to to predict sensitivity to future climate changes. More stress ecology research is needed at the frontier between ecotoxicology and ecology, going beyond standardized tests using model species in order to address multiple water quality factors (e.g. pH, temperature, toxicants) and organism health. However, available data allow us to conclude that near-future OA will have negative impact on echinoderm taxa with likely significant consequences at the ecosystem level.

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Section: Echinoderms As Models For Ecotoxicologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of near-future ocean acidification on echinoderms

2010

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“…Changes in shape and differentiation of embryo structures lead to the formation of a pluteus, the first larval stage. Genus-specific spicule growth and patterning is completed at this stage, directed by the spatial-temporal regulated expression of bio-mineralization related genes (Zito et al, 2005;Matranga et al, 2011). Sea urchin development from the blastula to the pluteus stage is showed in figure 2.…”

Section: Sea Urchin Embryonic Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Manganese: A New Emerging Contaminant in the Environment

Pinsino¹,

Matranga²,

Roccheri³

2012

Environmental Contamination

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“…Among the echinoderms, the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus is considered a suitable organism to study the ecotoxicological responses to xenobiotics and the physiological reactions to physical stressors [ 24 – 29 ]. It has also been used to test the effect of marine natural toxins, such as diatom-derived secondary metabolites, which have also apoptotic and anti-cancer activity [ 30 , 31 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High-quality RNA extraction from the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus embryos

et al. 2017

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The sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus (Lamarck, 1816) is a keystone herbivore in the Mediterranean Sea due to its ability to transform macroalgal-dominated communities into barren areas characterized by increased cover of bare substrates and encrusting coralline algae, reduced biodiversity and altered ecosystem functions. P. lividus is also an excellent animal model for toxicology, physiology and biology investigations having been used for more than a century as a model for embryological studies with synchronously developing embryos which are easy to manipulate and analyze for morphological aberrations. Despite its importance for the scientific community, the complete genome is still not fully annotated. To date, only a few molecular tools are available and a few Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) studies have been performed. Here we aimed at setting-up an RNA extraction method to obtain high quality and sufficient quantity of RNA for NGS from P. lividus embryos at the pluteus stage. We compared five different RNA extraction protocols from four different pools of plutei (500, 1000, 2500 and 5000 embryos): TRIzol®, and four widely-used Silica Membrane kits, GenElute™ Mammalian Total RNA Miniprep Kit, RNAqueous® Micro Kit, RNeasy® Micro Kit and Aurum™ Total RNA Mini Kit. The quantity of RNA isolated was evaluated using NanoDrop. The quality, considering the purity, was measured as A260/A280 and A260/230 ratios. The integrity was measured by RNA Integrity Number (RIN). Our results demonstrated that the most efficient procedures were GenElute, RNeasy and Aurum, producing a sufficient quantity of RNA for NGS. The Bioanalyzer profiles and RIN values revealed that the most efficient methods guaranteeing for RNA integrity were RNeasy and Aurum combined with an initial preservation in RNAlater. This research represents the first attempt to standardize a method for high-quality RNA extraction from sea urchin embryos at the pluteus stage, providing a new resource for this established model marine organism.

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Cell Adhesion and Communication: A Lesson from Echinoderm Embryos for the Exploitation of New Therapeutic Tools

Cited by 15 publications

References 166 publications

Impact of near-future ocean acidification on echinoderms

Impact of near-future ocean acidification on echinoderms

Manganese: A New Emerging Contaminant in the Environment

High-quality RNA extraction from the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus embryos

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