Dynamics of venom composition across a complex life cycle
- The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
- University of North Carolina at Charlotte, United States
Abstract
Little is known about venom in young developmental stages of animals. The appearance of toxins and stinging cells during early embryonic stages in the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis suggests that venom is already expressed in eggs and larvae of this species. Here we harness transcriptomic, biochemical and transgenic tools to study venom production dynamics in Nematostella. We find that venom composition and arsenal of toxin-producing cells change dramatically between developmental stages of this species. These findings can be explained by the vastly different interspecific interactions of each life stage, as individuals develop from a miniature non-feeding mobile planula to a larger sessile polyp that predates on other animals and interact differently with predators. Indeed, behavioral assays involving prey, predators and Nematostella are consistent with this hypothesis. Further, the results of this work suggest a much wider and dynamic venom landscape than initially appreciated in animals with a complex life cycle.
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Funding
Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 691/14)
- Yehu Moran
H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship 654294)
- Kartik Sunagar
- Yehu Moran
National Science Foundation (award 1536530)
- Adam M Reitzel
United States - Israel Binational Science Foundation (grant no. 2013119)
- Adam M Reitzel
- Yehu Moran
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: Experiments on Fundulus heteroclitus were performed under permit no. 17-018 granted by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte according to ethical regulations of Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (National Institutes of Health, USA).
Copyright
© 2018, Columbus-Shenkar et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Dynamics of venom composition across a complex life cycle
eLife 7:e35014.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.35014
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