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A Holistic Approach To Investigate Climate Change and Marine Neurobiology

Two researchers looking into a tank.
Credit: Researchers at the Allen Discovery Center for Neurobiology in Changing Environments. Credit: Erik Jepsen, UC San Diego.
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A new, state-of-the-art research center at the Scripps Institute for Oceanography, University of California San Diego, will offer a unique window into how climate change is impacting the nervous systems of marine life.


The Allen Discovery Center for Neurobiology in Changing Environments will unite expert scientists from a broad range of fields, including those that typically conduct research on ocean vessels to scientists that primarily work in medical laboratories. By bridging gaps between field and lab studies, the Center will offer new insights into marine life adaptation in the context of their natural environment.


The Center will utilize experimental techniques, including next-generation sequencing (NGS) and genome-editing tools, to conduct physiological and behavioral experiments. A specific goal for the Center’s researchers is to develop neural maps for four key species: taghorn coral, slipper snail, painted sea urchin and three-spined stickleback fish. Such maps will aid in understanding climate change’s effects on behavior and sensory perception, while also identifying any genetic variations that could support survival in warming oceans.


Technology Networks had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Martin Tresguerres, a professor of marine biology at Scripps, who will be heading up the Center in collaboration with co-lead principal investigators Dr. Amro Hamdoun and Dr. Deirdre Lyons. Tresguerres discussed existing research on climate change and marine neurobiology, why the Center is a necessary development in this field and how it could provide a roadmap for protecting marine life in the future.

Molly Coddington (MC):

What do we already know about the effects of warming oceans on the nervous system of marine life? Why is this a critical issue to investigate?


Martin Tresguerres, PhD (MT):

The nervous system is the sensory interface between animals and their environment. It allows them to find food and suitable places to live, avoid predators and carry out normal development and reproduction (among many other essential functions). The nervous systems have evolved to be adaptable to naturally changing environments; however, human-induced climate change is altering ocean conditions at a rate that may be too rapid for some species to keep pace with.


We know that elevated temperatures can generally affect a variety of neural processes, and the same goes for low oxygen levels and CO2-induced acidification. However, much of the evidence comes from laboratory experiments under controlled conditions on a handful of “model species” (e.g. mouse, fly, worm), or from field experiments that tend to be correlational.


Thus, there is an urgent need to characterize the fundamental genetic, physiological and behavioral neurobiological mechanisms of diverse marine animals in their natural environments, and if and how they are able to adjust to both natural- and human-induced climate change.


This will allow us to identify vulnerable and resilient species, predict the effects of climate change on natural populations and develop science-based conservation and restoration strategies.



MC:

The Center will combine cutting-edge genetic approaches with physiological and behavioral experiments. Can you provide more detail on the types of experiments that you expect to conduct, and the techniques that will be important to these experiments?


MT:

Something novel and very exciting about this Center is that we will integrate experiments throughout the entire spectrum of biological complexity under an evolutionary approach umbrella.


This means going from genes to cells to animals in the lab, and to populations in their natural environments. To do this, we will use a variety of sequencing techniques including:

  • Long read, single-cell and single-nucleus RNA sequencing and ATAC-Seq
  • CRISPR-Cas9 gene knock-ins and knockouts
  • High-throughput immunolocalization and hybridization chain reaction- fluorescence in situ hybridization (HCR-FISH)
  • Multi-photon imaging of live behaving animals expressing transgenic reporters of neural activity


We will also develop devices to simulate environmental variability in aquarium tanks, microscope stages and custom-made behavioral arenas.



MC:

Can you talk about the four species of marine life for which you will develop neural maps? Why have they been selected and what makes them so interesting in this context?


MT:

There are four main reasons why we carefully selected our four experimental species: a coral, a snail, a sea urchin and stickleback fish.


These species are very important ecologically: corals build reefs, the snail can be an invasive species, sea urchins can shape kelp forests and reefs through their gazing of algae and the stickleback is important in many food webs.


All of them can live in a relatively wide range of environmental conditions, for example, sticklebacks live from Baja California to Alaska – this indicates a certain ability to adapt to a wide range of environmental conditions.


Third, these four species belong to quite distinct phylogenetic groups, which have different levels of complexity of their nervous system. This will allow us to identify mechanisms and responses of both group-specific and universal mechanisms and responses to changing environments.


Finally, these four species are amenable to modern genetic manipulations such as CRISPR-Cas9, which will open the door for exploring our hypotheses using cutting-edge tools.



MC:

What impact do you expect the research produced by the Center will have, both short- and long-term?


MT:

Our overall goal is to lead a transformational wave bridging neurobiology and environmental science to impact scientific research, scientific training and public education throughout the world.


In the short term, we will create tools for studying the neurobiology of marine animals in environmentally relevant contexts in unprecedented detail, and we will elucidate fundamental neurobiological mechanisms of our four marine animal species at the genetic, physiological and population levels.


In the medium term, we hope to identify mechanisms that confer neurobiological resilience or vulnerability to naturally and human-induced changing environments, and to facilitate similar studies with other species – both aquatic and terrestrial.


In the long term, we will strive to guide policy-making, conservation and restoration science-based decisions and enable active interventional strategies. 

Throughout this entire process, we will work to create a framework to guide research on neurobiology in changing environments, and to catalyze scientific, political and popular interest in these topics worldwide.



MC:

The Center will unite researchers – and research areas – that wouldn’t typically intersect. Can you discuss the value and challenges associated with this type of collaboration? Do you have a framework in place for how it will operate?


MT:

While this type of transdisciplinary project is not entirely novel, the high level of funding provided by the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group will allow us to pursue a very ambitious plan at an unprecedented scale and in a timely manner.


I touched on the value of this transdisciplinary research in my previous answers; briefly, it will allow us to comprehensively study neural mechanisms of marine animals at the genetic and cellular levels, while also establishing their function and relevance in the “real world” and their responses to climate change.


The underlying challenges are many, including optimizing cutting-edge biomedical techniques for our non-model species, interpreting the significance of results that may be entirely novel (for example, genes with unknown functions that do not exist in model species) and coordinating the different research areas, which we call “research spheres”.


Our operational framework engages multiple scientists with expertise around four overlapping research spheres: neural cytogenomics, neural activity, physiological and behavioural neurogenomics and environmental neurogenomics.


This will allow us to holistically cover the entire spectrum of biological complexity from genes to ecosystems. We also follow a shared leadership scheme that includes a formal Center leader (Tresguerres) and two co-leaders (Hamdoun and Lyons), and multiple specific sub-tasks that will be driven by the various collaborators.

Additionally, we will also have an external scientific advisory board that will provide strategic feedback and recommendations. Another key aspect of our Center is that we will collaborate with education experts at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps to translate complex science for diverse audiences. We will also embrace an Open Science approach to ensure the engagement and benefit of the broader scientific community, with a focus on scientists from developing countries. 
A person scuba diving.

A member of the research group scuba diving. Credit: David Kline.