Recherche - Observatoire océanologique de Banyuls sur mer
Laboratoire Arago

Understanding how the vertebrate brain evolved to complexity is one of the most challenging enterprises of science with obvious impact in developmental biology and neuroscience. Amphioxus, has been long considered the key organism to decipher the molecular basis of vertebrates genesis and evolution. This includes the origin of the vertebrate brain and specially the origin of the vertebrate telencephalon, which is the most advanced part of the brain from an evolutionary perspective. Detailed maps of the neuroanatomy of amphioxus are available for the brain of the adult and only one stage of embryonic development. These maps categorize distinct neuronal types based on em morphology but the current resolution of gene expression atlases does not allow to establish the molecular identity of such cells. With the main goal of filling the gap between morphology and molecular expression data, we are developing single cell resolution techniques to establish the molecular identity of morphologically distinct cell types in the cns of amphioxus. To this aim we generated a normalized axonal scaffold that we use as a template to map back cells expressing specific molecular products. In order to establish unique landmarks in the amphioxus brain we produced amphioxus specific antibodies against several neuropetides and used them as a differentiation markers. Our results indicate that the amphioxus brain develops slowly, revealing a higher number of mature neurons only at late stages of development, when a neuroendocrine center can be recognized in the amphioxus brain.

Séminaire présenté par Elia Benito Guttierez (Detlev Arendt Laboratory, EMBL) le 7/10/2011 à 14h00 (Amphi. A. Guille - Bt B 1er étage)