The filasterean Capsaspora owczarzaki as an experimentally tractable system to understand the origin of animal multicellularity

ALBERTO PÉREZ POSADA; IÑAKI RUIZ-TRILLO; HELENA PARRA ACERO; SEBASTIÁN R. NAJLE; NÚRIA ROS I ROCHER; ALEKSANDRA KOZYCZKOWSKA

Barcelona

Jornada; XVII Jornada de Biologia Evolutiva; 2017

Societat Catalana de Biologia

The transition to animal multicellularity from a single-celled ancestor is one of the most transcendent events in the history of life. Recent genome data from the closest unicellular relatives to animals have shown that changes in regulatory programs involving cell signalling, cell adhesion, cell communication and transcriptional regulation were probably crucial for the emergence of metazoans. Thus, functional studies of key genes involved in these programs essential for multicellular functions in a unicellular context can give us insights into the molecular mechanisms that drove this transition. However, traditional model systems cannot address this question. Thus, we need to develop genetic tools among the closest unicellular relatives of animals, which are the only ones with the potential to answer how regulatory programs were co-opted at the onset of Metazoa. To this end, we have developed the filasterean Capsaspora owczarzaki, one of the closest unicellular relatives of animals, as an experimentally tractable system. We have optimized a classical transfection protocol with plasmid DNA, which results in a reasonable efficiency for further functional assays such as overexpression and localization experiments. In this regard, we have created a platform of multiple expression vectors tagging several cellular locations. In parallel, we are evaluating several selection strategies to achieve stable transfection. Preliminary results and implications of this study will be presented and discussed.