Meeting Abstract
There are a wide range of developmental strategies in animal phyla. For indirect-developing species, a larval body plan transforms into an adult body plan, often via a dramatic metamorphosis. In species where metamorphosis occurs by remodeling of larval tissue into adult tissue, this body plan transition provides an opportunity to investigate the cell biology of this process and how proliferation and apoptosis are balanced through this important threshold in development. We propose that Schizocardium californicum , an indirect developing deuterostome hemichordate worm, provides an excellent model for investigating how processes of transdifferentiation, proliferation, and cell death that remodel and reshape the larval body plan. We are using a combination of genomics, cell, and developmental biology to answer the following: given that two life phases of Schizocardium californicum are drastically different, how does development build the larval versus adult body plan? In our initial experiments, we investigated the spatial distribution of proliferation in both S. californicum larvae and adults with the aim of understanding, whether the identity or role of these proliferative cells changes through development. Our next steps involve investigating the balance of proliferation and apoptosis during the dramatic remodeling of pre-existing larval structures, along with loss and gain of larval-specific and adult-specific traits respectively.
