Eugene Bell Center for Regenerative Biology and Tissue Engineering

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https://hdl.handle.net/1912/4819

The ability of many animals to spontaneously regenerate their body parts has intrigued scientific observers for centuries. Although humans share the same basic genes and pathways, we have somehow lost these regenerative capacities, which leads to significant health costs. An understanding of tissue and organ regeneration in lower animals holds great promise for translating to medical treatments for serious human conditions, including spinal cord injury, diabetes, organ failure, and degenerative neural diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

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Browsing Eugene Bell Center for Regenerative Biology and Tissue Engineering by Author "Albertin, Caroline B."
  • Article
    Cephalopod-omics: emerging fields and technologies in cephalopod biology
    (Oxford University Press, 2023-06-27) Baden, Tom ; Briseno, John ; Coffing, Gabrielle ; Cohen-Bodenes, Sophie ; Courtney, Amy ; Dickerson, Dominick ; Dolen, Gul ; Fiorito, Graziano ; Gestal, Camino ; Gustafson, Taryn ; Heath-Heckman, Elizabeth ; Hua, Qiaz ; Imperadore, Pamela ; Kimbara, Ryosuke ; Krol, Mirela ; Lajbner, Zdenek ; Lichilín, Nicolas ; Macchi, Filippo ; McCoy, Matthew J. ; Nishiguchi, Michele K. ; Nyholm, Spencer V. ; Otjacques, Eve ; Perez-Ferrer, Pedro Antonio ; Ponte, Giovanna ; Pungor, Judit R. ; Rogers, Thea F. ; Rosenthal, Joshua J. C. ; Rouressol, Lisa ; Rubas, Noelle ; Sanchez, Gustavo ; Santos, Catarina Pereira ; Schultz, Darrin T. ; Seuntjens,Eve ; Songco-Casey, Jeremea O. ; Stewart, Ian Erik ; Styfhals, Ruth ; Tuanapaya, Surangkana ; Vijayan, Nidhi ; Weissenbacher, Anton ; Zifcakova, Lucia ; Schulz, Grace ; Weertman, Willem ; Simakov, Oleg ; Albertin, Caroline B.
    Few animal groups can claim the level of wonder that cephalopods instill in the minds of researchers and the general public. Much of cephalopod biology, however, remains unexplored: the largest invertebrate brain, difficult husbandry conditions, and complex (meta-)genomes, among many other things, have hindered progress in addressing key questions. However, recent technological advancements in sequencing, imaging, and genetic manipulation have opened new avenues for exploring the biology of these extraordinary animals. The cephalopod molecular biology community is thus experiencing a large influx of researchers, emerging from different fields, accelerating the pace of research in this clade. In the first post-pandemic event at the Cephalopod International Advisory Council (CIAC) conference in April 2022, over 40 participants from all over the world met and discussed key challenges and perspectives for current cephalopod molecular biology and evolution. Our particular focus was on the fields of comparative and regulatory genomics, gene manipulation, single-cell transcriptomics, metagenomics, and microbial interactions. This article is a result of this joint effort, summarizing the latest insights from these emerging fields, their bottlenecks, and potential solutions. The article highlights the interdisciplinary nature of the cephalopod-omics community and provides an emphasis on continuous consolidation of efforts and collaboration in this rapidly evolving field.
  • Article
    Squid express conserved ADAR orthologs that possess novel features
    (Frontiers Media, 2023-06-05) Vallecillo-Viejo, Isabel C. ; Voss, Gjendine ; Albertin, Caroline B. ; Liscovitch-Brauer, Noa ; Eisenberg, Eli ; Rosenthal, Joshua J. C.
    The coleoid cephalopods display unusually extensive mRNA recoding by adenosine deamination, yet the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. Because the adenosine deaminases that act on RNA (ADAR) enzymes catalyze this form of RNA editing, the structure and function of the cephalopod orthologs may provide clues. Recent genome sequencing projects have provided blueprints for the full complement of coleoid cephalopod ADARs. Previous results from our laboratory have shown that squid express an ADAR2 homolog, with two splice variants named sqADAR2a and sqADAR2b and that these messages are extensively edited. Based on octopus and squid genomes, transcriptomes, and cDNA cloning, we discovered that two additional ADAR homologs are expressed in coleoids. The first is orthologous to vertebrate ADAR1. Unlike other ADAR1s, however, it contains a novel N-terminal domain of 641 aa that is predicted to be disordered, contains 67 phosphorylation motifs, and has an amino acid composition that is unusually high in serines and basic amino acids. mRNAs encoding sqADAR1 are themselves extensively edited. A third ADAR-like enzyme, sqADAR/D-like, which is not orthologous to any of the vertebrate isoforms, is also present. Messages encoding sqADAR/D-like are not edited. Studies using recombinant sqADARs suggest that only sqADAR1 and sqADAR2 are active adenosine deaminases, both on perfect duplex dsRNA and on a squid potassium channel mRNA substrate known to be edited in vivo. sqADAR/D-like shows no activity on these substrates. Overall, these results reveal some unique features in sqADARs that may contribute to the high-level RNA recoding observed in cephalopods.