Meeting Abstract
Animals underwent a period of rapid evolution around 500 million years ago, in what is now referred to as the Cambrian explosion. The majority of extant phyla descending from that period include organisms that possess the ability to biomineralize. Large datasets of transcriptomic and proteomic information have been generated to assess whether a conserved biomineralization toolkit exists among Metazoa. However, a purely bioinformatics approach is unable to reveal how a gene’s function contributes to biomineralization. It is still not determined whether the gene networks controlling biomineralization in different taxa are conserved, or whether biomineralization has evolved independently in the metazoan lineage. To address this, we are using the calyptraeid gastropod, Crepidula, as a model organism to understand biomineralization among mollusks. Crepidula is amenable to genetic perturbation studies like CRISPR, morpholinos, and overexpression studies, allowing for functional perturbation of genes expressed in the shell gland. The cell lineages that give rise to the shell gland are known, and we have screened transcriptomes for genes involved in shell patterning and biomineralization in developing embryos and larvae of Crepidula fornicata. Expression of the genes within the shell gland may reveal putative roles in biomineralization. The data will be used to construct a biomineralization gene regulatory network in a gastropod mollusk, allowing for comparative studies to be taken among other calcifying members in the Metazoa.
