Meeting Abstract
Turritopsis dohrnii (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa) undergoes lifecycle reversal to avoid death caused by physical damage, adverse environmental conditions, or aging. This unique ability has granted the species the name, the “Immortal Jellyfish”. T. dohrnii exhibits an additional developmental stage to the typical hydrozoan lifecycle which provides a new paradigm to further understand regeneration, cellular plasticity, and aging. Weakened jellyfish will undergo a whole-body transformation into a cluster of uncharacterized tissue, referred to as the cyst stage, which then will metamorphoses back into an earlier lifecycle stage, the polyp. The underlying cellular processes that permit its reverse development is called transdifferentiation, a mechanism in which a fully mature and differentiated cell can switch into a new cell type. The polyp, jellyfish and cyst stage of T. dohrnii were sequenced through RNA-sequencing, and the transcriptomes were assembled de novo, and then annotated to create the gene expression profile of each stage. Comparative functional gene enrichment analyses with the cyst as the central stage of comparison reported significant GO categories that were over-expressed, such as telomere maintenance and DNA repair, in the cyst as compared to other stages. The enrichment analyses also reported significantly under-expressed categories, such as mitotic cell division, cellular differentiation and development, in the cyst as compared to the other stages. Ultimately, our work produced a foundation to develop an alternative model system to further investigate and comprehend regeneration, cellular plasticity and aging in metazoans.
