Researchers Reveal Surprises in Sea Anemone Genome (2/7/2008)

A team of international researchers, one of them a University of Maine professor, has discovered in a primitive starlet sea anemone the genes for a biochemical pathway that scientists had thought did not exist in animals.

Malcolm Shick, a professor of oceanography and zoology at the UMaine School of Marine Sciences, and six colleagues, including Walt Dunlap, a former UMaine Visiting Libra Professor now at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, published their findings recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The anemone, called Nematostella vectensis, is among the simplest of multicellular animals. A relative of the familiar jellyfish and corals, it has been studied extensively by evolutionary and developmental biologists.

Using a bioinformatics approach to "mine" the published genome of Nematostella, the researchers found that genes for some of the enzymes of the shikimic acid pathway, which is responsible for the production of dietary-essential amino acids, had been transferred to the animal from both bacterial and algal donors. The researchers say theirs is the first report of enzymes of that pathway being encoded in the genome of an animal.

The team also found that the anemone's published genetic sequences actually include many bacterial sequences that are not associated with the animal's genome. The researchers say this indicates the presence of unsuspected bacterial symbionts - the smaller partners in a symbiotic relationship -- in the early developmental stages of the sea anemone.

Shick says the findings could help explain several seeming anomalies in the metabolic biochemistry of corals and sea anemones. Understanding the concept of "shared metabolic adaptation," in which both partners of a symbiosis are required for biosynthesis, could provide critical insight into the metabolic dysfunction caused by climate change and environmental stress.

Shick and a team that includes Dunlap and Paul Long, a University of London School of Pharmacy scientist who led the Nematostella research, are also investigating the biochemical and molecular bases of coral bleaching -- a condition in which corals under stress lose their symbiotic algae -- in response to climate change.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by The University of Maine

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