Marina MORINI

Global warming is an increasing threat to wildlife and aquatic organisms are particularly vulnerable to temperature changes. As highlighted by the 2021 Nobel Prize, TRP channels constitute a superfamily of receptors involved in sensory functions, including thermosensing. This discovery focused mainly on mammals and very little data is yet available in other metazoans. The EvoThermoRec project will investigate the evolutionary scenarios of TRP families across metazoans and study the regulation of TRP expression in non-conventional aquatic model organisms within key-phylogenetic positions. It will implement interdisciplinary approaches ranging from molecular phylogeny and synteny, to gene expression and ecophysiology. It will include experimental investigation on specific non-bilaterian and bilaterian representative aquatic species of phylogenetical, biological, ecological and socioeconomic interest, such as cnidarian (corals), cephalopod (cuttlefish) and teleost (eel). The objectives are: retrace by phylogenetic and synteny analyses the evolutionary scenarios of TRP families in metazoans and provide in silico information on structure-function relationships; investigate in chosen models the tissue distribution of the expression of TRP paralogs, explore how temperature affects their expression in vivo, and correlate the variations in TRP expression under the effect of temperature with physiological parameters studied by the host team and its collaborators. This project will provide necessary information on TRP repertoires according to metazoan lineages and clarify the nomenclature of TRP genes across metazoans. It will open new avenues for basic and applied research on temperature sensing in metazoans.