Meeting Abstract
The cherry shrimp, Neocaridina denticulata, has been proposed as a transgenic model organism for Crustacea1,2. As a pet species, it is inexpensive, and can be cultured in fresh water aquaria. It has a life cycle amenable to genetic manipulation; eggs are fertilized upon laying and are kept on the ‘berried’ female pleopods until hatching. Embryos directly develop into juveniles with no planktonic larval stage, reaching reproductive maturity in 4-6 months. We have established several cultures of cherry shrimp color morphs. Although animals are tolerant to poor water quality and remain viable, in our hands, egg development seems be impeded at high pH or nitrate/nitrite levels; oogenesis will initiate, but completion of vitellogenesis is impaired. Limb regeneration is uncoupled from the molt cycle and multiple limb autotomy will not accelerate molting. Limb development is also not coordinately regulated relative to molt and presumed circulating ecdysteroid titers, since synchronous limb autotomy produces individual regenerates from the same animal that may require less than, or more than, a single molt cycle to reach full limb development. Due to the reduced levels of female pigmentation in the Rili strain, this morph seems best suited for microinjection studies. Experiments examining protocols for egg microinjection and assessment of genomic variation among morphs are in progress. 1Mykles, DL, Hui, JHL, 2015. Neocaridina denticulata: A Decapod Crustacean Model for Functional Genomics. Integr. Comp. Biol. doi:10.1093/icb/icv050. 2Mykles, DL, et al. 2016. Resources and Recommendations for Using Transcriptomics to Address Grand Challenges in Comparative Biology. Integr. Comp. Biol. doi:10.1093/icb/icw083
