Presentation Details
| Unearthing Chemesthesis and Chemesensory Genes in the Earthworm Dendrobaena veneta with Long-Read Transcriptomics. Jonathan G Mebrahtu1, Adriana Messyasz2, Alexander Lemenze2, 3, Cecil J Saunders1. 1Department of Biological Sciences, School of Integrative Science and Technology, Kean University, Union, NJ, USA.2Molecular and Genomics Informatics Core, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ, USA.3Department of Pathology, Immunology, and Laboratory Medicine, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ, USA |
Abstract
The unique ecological niche of earthworms necessitates that they be chemosensory and somatosensory specialists. Our previous work has focused on describing the cellular and molecular mechanisms of chemosensation and chemesthesis in the earthworm, Dendrobaena veneta. Our molecular and behavioral results provide evidence for functional TRP channels (TRPA1 & TRPM8) that appear to mediate the aversive response to irritants such as AITC, cinnamaldehyde, and menthol. We have also demonstrated that sodium salts are more aversive to earthworms than potassium, calcium, or magnesium salts at equivalent concentrations, and that amiloride-sensitive sodium channels are linked to the perception of sodium salts. Additionally, we have determined that glutamic acid and alanine significantly increase worm feeding rates and have identified homologs of the neuropeptides myomodulin and FMRFamide that alter gastric motility. Building on these studies, we present an improved transcriptome assembly utilizing long-read PacBio RNA-seq data. RNA was extracted from cerebral & segmental ganglia, prostomium (e.g. mouth parts) epithelium, flank epithelium, crop, and gizzard (n=3). Libraries from these samples were sequenced on two PacBio Sequel II flow cells, yielding 14.6 million reads. After the standard circular consensus sequencing pipeline, we generated 4.1 million hifi reads per cell with a mean subread length 1,957bp (N50 2,083bp), yielding approximately half a million unique protein-coding transcripts. Blast annotations of those transcripts revealed 37 unique homologs to G-protein coupled glutamate receptors, 48 TRP channel homologs, 9 transcript Epithelial Sodium Channels (ENaCs) subunits. These data provide a comprehensive resource for identifying novel chemoreceptors and signaling pathways in D. veneta.
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