Giovanna Romano

Aldehyde suppression of copepod recruitment in blooms of a ubiquitous planktonic diatom

The growth cycle in nutrient-rich, aquatic environments starts with a diatom bloom that ends in mass sinking of ungrazed cells and phytodetritus. The low grazing pressure on these blooms has been attributed to the inability of overwintering copepod populations to track them temporally. We tested an alternative explanation: that dominant diatom species impair the reproductive success of their grazers. We compared larval development of a common overwintering copepod fed on a ubiquitous, early-blooming diatom species with its development when fed on a typical post-bloom dinoflagellate. Development was arrested in all larvae in which both mothers and their larvae were fed the diatom diet. Mortality remained high even if larvae were switched to the dinoflagellate diet. Aldehydes, cleaved from a fatty acid precursor by enzymes activated within seconds after crushing of the cell, elicit the teratogenic effect. This insidious mechanism, which does not deter the herbivore from feeding but impairs its recruitment, will restrain the cohort size of the next generation of early-rising overwinterers. Such a transgenerational plant–herbivore interaction could explain the recurringly inefficient use of a predictable, potentially valuable food resource—the spring diatom bloom—by marine zooplankton.

The Marine Microbial Eukaryote Transcriptome Sequencing Project (MMETSP): Illuminating the Functional Diversity of Eukaryotic Life in the Oceans through Transcriptome Sequencing.

Current sampling of genomic sequence data from eukaryotes is relatively poor, biased, and inadequate to address important questions about their biology, evolution, and ecology; this Community Page describes a resource of 700 transcriptomes from marine microbial eukaryotes to help understand their role in the worlds oceans.

A marine diatom-derived aldehyde induces apoptosis in copepod and sea urchin embryos

SUMMARY The diatom-derived aldehyde 2-trans-4-trans-decadienal (DD) was tested as an apoptogenic inducer in both copepod and sea urchin embryos, using terminal-deoxynucleotidyl-transferase-mediated dUTP nick-end labelling (TUNEL), DNA fragmentation profiling (laddering) and an assay for caspase-3 activity. DD induced TUNEL positivity and DNA laddering, but not caspase-like activation, in copepod embryos spawned by females fed for 10-15 days the diatom diet Thalassiosira rotula Meunier (in vivo), or when newly spawned eggs were exposed for 1 h to 5 μg ml-1 DD (in vitro). To our knowledge, this is the first time that evidence for an apoptotic process in copepods has been obtained by cytochemical (TUNEL) and biochemical (DNA fragmentation) approaches. The absence of caspase-like activity in copepod embryos suggests that caspase-independent programmed cell death occurs in these organisms. In sea urchin embryos, DD induced apoptosis and also activated a caspase-3-like protease. The saturated aldehyde decanal induced apoptosis at higher concentrations and after a longer incubation period than DD, indicating that α,β-unsaturation of the molecule, coupled with the aldehyde group, is responsible for the greater biological activity of DD. Since diatoms are an important food source for marine herbivores such as copepods and sea urchins, these findings may help explain why unsaturated aldehydes often induce reproductive failure, with important ecological consequences at the population level.

LOX-Induced Lipid Peroxidation Mechanism Responsible for the Detrimental Effect of Marine Diatoms on Zooplankton Grazers

Some marine diatoms negatively affect the reproduction of dominant zooplankton grazers such as copepods, thus compromising the transfer of energy through the marine food chains. In this paper, the metabolic mechanism that leads to diatom‐induced toxicity is investigated in three bloom‐forming microalgae. We show that copepod dysfunctions can be induced by highly reactive oxygen species (hROS) and a blended mixture of diatom products, including fatty acid hydroperoxides (FAHs); these compounds display teratogenic and proapoptotic properties. The process is triggered by the early onset of lipoxygenase activities that elicit the synthesis of species‐specific products, the basic structures of which were established (1–20); these compounds boost oxidative stress by massive lipid peroxidation. Our study might explain past laboratory and field results showing how diatoms damage zooplankton grazers even in the absence of polyunsaturated aldehydes, a class of molecules that has been formerly implicated in mediating the toxic activity of diatoms on copepods.

New birth-control aldehydes from the marine diatom Skeletonema costatum: characterization and biogenesis

Abstract The paper describes the identification of short-chain aldehydes ( 4 – 7 ) from the marine diatom Skeletonema costatum , and their effects on copepod egg viability and sea urchin cell division. Compounds 4 – 7 were isolated as carboethoxyethylidene (CET) derivatives and their characterization was performed by NMR and GCMS analyses. Evidence is presented to support the defensive role and biosynthetic origin of these compounds in S. costatum .

Chemistry of oxylipin pathways in marine diatoms

Oxylipins are important signal transduction molecules widely distributed in animals and plants where they regulate a variety of events associated with physiological and pathological processes. The family embraces several different metabolites that share a common origin from the oxygenase-catalyzed oxidation of polyunsaturated fatty acids. The biological role of these compounds has been especially studied in mammalians and higher plants, although a varied and very high concentration of these products has also been reported from marine macroalgae. This article gives a summary of our results concerning the oxylipin chemistry of marine diatoms, a major class of planktonic microalgae that discourage predation from their natural grazers, zooplanktonic copepods, using chemical warfare. These apparently harmless microscopic cells produce a plethora of oxylipins, including short-chain unsaturated aldehydes, hydroxyl-, keto-, and epoxyhydroxy fatty acid derivatives, that induce reproductive failure in copepods through abortions, congenital malformations, and reduced larval growth. The biochemical process involved in the production of these compounds shows a simple regulation based on decompartmentation and mixing of preexisting enzymes and requires hydrolysis of chloroplast-derived glycolipids to feed the downstream activities of C16 and C20 lipoxygenases.

Is postembryonic development in the copepod Temora stylifera negatively affected by diatom diets

Diatoms are major components of the marine microalgae and are generally considered to be the principal food source for small pelagic crustaceans such as copepods. Recently, some species of this algal class have been shown to produce abortifacient compounds (aldehydes) that block copepod embryogenesis, thereby acting as a form of birth control for predatory copepods. To test if diatoms also have deleterious effects on postembryonic development, several diatom species were used to rear larval stages of the calanoid copepod Temora stylifera to adulthood. Our results show that T. stylifera was only able to complete development from hatching to adulthood when reared with the flagellates Isochrysis galbana and the dinoflagellates Prorocentrum minimum and Oxyrrhis marina. The daily development and mortality rates observed were in the range of those reported from previous studies on T. stylifera (0.68–0.82 stage/day and 9.9–12.4%/day, respectively). In contrast, larvae reared on the diatoms Thalassiosira rotula, Skeletonema costatum and Phaeodactylum tricornutum were unable to complete development to adulthood and died without passing the naupliar phase or during the early copepodite stages. Daily mortality rates were higher than for nondiatom species (20.3–35.5%/day). Inhibitory effects on growth were not correlated to cell size of the algae. Final survivorship of larvae fed P. minimum and I. galbana significantly improved (70–80%) when larvae were generated from females preconditioned with P. minimum for 24 h. The same treatment had no beneficial effect on larvae fed with T. rotula or S. costatum, which died again before the adult stage. Although larvae completed development in one replicate with T. rotula and final survivorship improved to 34% (compared to 7% in nauplii from nonconditioned females), this value was, in any case, lower than with nondiatom diets. No morphological aberrations were found in larvae fed on diatoms, even though they were unable to complete their life cycle and died for unknown reasons. By contrast, nauplii produced by females fed the diatom T. rotula for 7 days showed strong congenital defects such as asymmetrical bodies and reduced number of feeding appendages. Our results suggest that diatoms, which have already been shown to have deleterious effects on copepod embryonic development, may also have insidious effects on larval growth of this copepod species.

Detection of short-chain aldehydes in marine organisms: the diatom Thalassiosira rotula

Abstract Short-chain aldehydes are analysed by GC–MS and NMR after their transformation into the corresponding carboxyethylethylidene (CET) derivatives via Wittig reaction. The procedure implies the treatment of the aldehyde with (carbetoxyethylidene)-triphenylphosphorane under very mild conditions. The method is suitable for the detection of short and medium chain aldehydes. CET derivatives are easily prepared and can be utilised for the analysis of raw biological samples. The efficacy of the method has been tested in the identification of biologically active aldehydes in the marine diatom Thalassiosira rotula . At least two compounds, trans , trans -octadienal and 2- trans -4- trans -2,4,7-octatrienal, that have not been revealed in previous papers are unambiguously identified in the microalga.

The Relevance of Marine Chemical Ecology to Plankton and Ecosystem Function: An Emerging Field

Marine chemical ecology comprises the study of the production and interaction of bioactive molecules affecting organism behavior and function. Here we focus on bioactive compounds and interactions associated with phytoplankton, particularly bloom-forming diatoms, prymnesiophytes and dinoflagellates. Planktonic bioactive metabolites are structurally and functionally diverse and some may have multiple simultaneous functions including roles in chemical defense (antipredator, allelopathic and antibacterial compounds), and/or cell-to-cell signaling (e.g., polyunsaturated aldehydes (PUAs) of diatoms). Among inducible chemical defenses in response to grazing, there is high species-specific variability in the effects on grazers, ranging from severe physical incapacitation and/or death to no apparent physiological response, depending on predator susceptibility and detoxification capability. Most bioactive compounds are present in very low concentrations, in both the producing organism and the surrounding aqueous medium. Furthermore, bioactivity may be subject to synergistic interactions with other natural and anthropogenic environmental toxicants. Most, if not all phycotoxins are classic secondary metabolites, but many other bioactive metabolites are simple molecules derived from primary metabolism (e.g., PUAs in diatoms, dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP) in prymnesiophytes). Producing cells do not seem to suffer physiological impact due to their synthesis. Functional genome sequence data and gene expression analysis will provide insights into regulatory and metabolic pathways in producer organisms, as well as identification of mechanisms of action in target organisms. Understanding chemical ecological responses to environmental triggers and chemically-mediated species interactions will help define crucial chemical and molecular processes that help maintain biodiversity and ecosystem functionality.

Molecular forms of immunoreactive gonadotropin-releasing hormone in hypothalamus and testis of the frog, Rana esculenta.

The hypothalamus and the testis of the frog, Rana esculenta, contain gonadotropin-releasing hormone (Gn-RH)-like peptides which are recognized by an antiserum raised against mammalian Gn-RH. Two molecular forms which coelute with synthetic chicken II and salmon Gn-RH from reverse-phase HPLC were distinguished in the hypothalamus. A single peak coeluting with synthetic chicken II Gn-RH was present in the testis.