Special Seminar: Richard Cornette, "Dessication-tolerant cell lines"

Tuesday, December 4, 2018
10:00 a.m.
1103 Bioscience Research Building
Pamela Abshire
pabshire@umd.edu

Extreme desiccation tolerance (anhydrobiosis) in the midge Polypedilum vanderplanki: from basic research to applied science

Richard Cornette
Chief Principal Researcher
Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, NARO
Tsukuba, Japan

Host: Pamela Abshire

Abstract
Larvae of the midge Polypedilum vanderplanki (Diptera, Chironomidae) live in small rock pools that appear during the rainy season on granitic outcrops in the semi-arid regions of Africa. At the beginning of the dry season, rock pools dry-up and P. vanderplanki larvae desiccate to reach a dormant ametabolic state, called anhydrobiosis, in which they can survive for several months until next rain. Upon rehydration, dry larvae recover normal activity and development. During the induction of anhydrobiosis, P. vanderplanki larvae accumulate in their tissues a large amount of trehalose that will form a glassy matrix protecting cellular components and biological molecules against desiccation stress. Nevertheless, larvae experience important oxidative stress during the rehydration process, leading to membrane lipid and DNA damages that are quickly repaired. Genome and transcriptome analyses identified a plethora of chaperone proteins, antioxidant genes, transporters and repair genes, which are contributing to successful anhydrobiosis.

Research on the induction mechanism of desiccation tolerance in P.vanderplanki showed that the protective mechanisms could be up-regulated at the cellular level without hormonal control. Recently, a desiccation protocol was developed for Pv11 cells, an embryonic cell line originated from P. vanderplanki and successful dry preservation of these cells was achieved. Gene functional analysis tools, such as RNAi, over-expression systems, or genome editing with CRISPR/Cas9 system, were adapted to P. vanderplanki cells and allowed the characterization of many anhydrobiosis-related genes. Now, we are aiming to mimic P. vanderplanki anhydrobiosis to develop a new technology of long term dry preservation at room temperature for cells or biological materials.

Biography
Richard Cornette is Chief Principal Researcher at the Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, NARO (Tsukuba, Japan). Born in Lille, Northern France, he got his Ph.D. in 2002 at the University of Burgundy (Dijon, France) on the characterization of proteins involved in the sexual behavior of cockroaches. After his Ph.D., Cornette came to Japan first as a JSPS foreign post-doctoral fellow and then as an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo, where he studied the influence of juvenile hormone on the differentiation in termites. In 2005, he moved to Hokkaido University as an INOUE fellow, continuing his research on termite caste differentiation. From 2007, he got a post of researcher at the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences in Tsukuba (Japan), to study the desiccation tolerance of the anhydrobiotic midge Polypedilum vanderplanki. Until now, he contributed to decipher the mechanism of desiccation tolerance in P.vanderplanki through transcriptomics and gene functional analyses and his research is now focused on the development of dry preservation techniques at room temperature for biological material.

 

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