Ocean Genome Legacy | September/October Newsletter
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In this issue, we learn about starfish wasting syndrome, a mysterious disease decimating these iconic marine animals on the East and West Coasts of the U.S.; we announce a prestigious research grant awarded to a collaborating group of research institutions including OGL; and we learn about the first marine specimen deposited to OGL by a student at Northeastern University's Marine Science Center, OGL's new home. And finally, a heads-up, our Fall Appeal is coming... your opportunity to help support the great work of OGL! Look for it in our upcoming mailing.
Click here to learn more about OGL and its mission. And, as always, follow our expeditions and other news from the marine world on our Facebook and Twitter pages!
Sincerely,
Dan Distel, PhD
Ocean Genome Legacy
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 Starfish Wasting Disease
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A Keystone Species May Be Wasting Away
Since Robert Paine first introduced the concept in 1969, scientists have observed that shifts in dominant, or "keystone," species can quickly change ecosystems, leading to greater impacts than might otherwise be expected. Now, starfish populations in the once-rich seascape that Paine studied along the Washington Coast are being decimated. Among the few sea stars that remain, many are diseased and wasting away.
Dr. Drew Harvell from Cornell University is studying this disease on the West Coast and has documented many instances where decaying remains are all that are left in this once heavily populated region.
Sea star wasting syndrome has been seen on both the west and east coasts of the U.S. dating back to 1978. Signs appeared again in 1997, and since 2013 this syndrome has been continuously documented along the West Coast. Dr. Harvell has dedicated much of her current work to discovering the source of the disease and its causative agent(s), having found a correlation between the disease and warm water. There are also indications that the causative agent has a local reservoir, possibly in food sources or in the water column, though the mechanism of spread remains unclear.
But there is still hope for these friendly echinoderms. Dr. Harvell hopes that recruitment of young animals from cooler northern waters and natural disease resistance among these juveniles may lead to a return of these important animals. Citizen scientists are also contributing to the cause by volunteering on comprehensive surveys of local intertidal fauna in Santa Cruz, CA, and Friday Harbor, WA. Combined with Dr. Harvell's work, these programs offer hope that we will once again see these iconic keystone species thrive on the Northeast Pacific Coast.
Read more...
Santa Cruz research
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Left: Healthy sunflower sea star (credit: C. Burge, udiscover.it/applications/seastar). Right: Sea star showing advanced signs of wasting disease (credit: vanaqua.org).
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OGL Research Secures Ongoing Funding from the National Institutes of Health
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OGL Director, Dan Distel, inspects mangrove roots for shipworm damage in a mangrove forest near the town of Talibon on the Island of Bohol in the Philippines.
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Key concerns in public health today include diseases for which there are no effective cures and pathogens that are becoming increasingly drug-resistant. As a result, new treatments and medications are desperately needed. Many of these new drugs may be awaiting discovery in the world's oceans! To address this problem, the International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups (ICBG) program --which is jointly administered by the NIH and the National Science Foundation (NSF) --supports new and ongoing efforts to combine biodiversity discovery and conservation with new drug discovery. Recently, the NIH announced the results of its ICBG Competition for 2014-2019. Only three awards were made for this prestigious five-year international grant program, and one of them went to a consortium including our own Ocean Genome Legacy Center at Northeastern University. The grant will fund a project designed to discover potential drug leads and other useful chemical compounds in bacteria that live as symbionts on marine mollusks.
Why look for drugs in symbiotic bacteria? These bacteria have evolved to produce chemicals that control their host's metabolism and prevent infection by competing bacteria without doing harm to these animals which they depend on for their livelihood.
This makes these compounds good candidates for
low side-effect drugs. The research team is seeking
to discover therapies for bacterial infections, parasitic diseases such as toxoplasmosis and cryptosporidiosis, cancer, pain and other neurological conditions.
The biologists carrying out this research will study venomous gastropods called cone snails and wood-eating clams known as shipworms, two animal groups whose symbiotic bacteria have proven to be rich in biologically active molecules with potential value as drug candidates. Additionally, the project aims to foster training, conservation, and the development of scientific infrastructure in the Philippines.
Read the full press release here.
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Graduate Student David Stein Joins OGL
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 David Paul Stein OGL welcomes Dave Stein, who is pursuing his Masters degree at Northeastern University in the Three Seas program. Says Dave, "This great program has given me the opportunity to work at the Marine Science Center in Nahant, MA; at the Smithsonian Research Station in Bocas del Toro, Panama; and at the Friday Harbor Marine Laboratory in WA. Now, I am completing a six-month co-op research experience at Ocean Genome Legacy, collecting data for a genomic study on a species of shipworm and identifying the growth preferences of bacterial communities within the organism. I would like to research the pathogenic communities associated with invertebrate diseases and examine what, if any, adaptive response invertebrates may have to these diseases as part of research for a doctoral degree." |
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OGL Thanks Marine Science Center Graduate Student for Specimen
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OGL thanks Northeastern University Marine Science Center graduate student Nick Colvard of the Helmuth Lab for depositing a specimen of the sea gooseberry, Pleurobrachia pileus, to the Ocean Genome Legacy Biorepository. The Encyclopedia of Life describes P. pileus this way:
"Despite their delicate, almost ghostly appearance, sea-gooseberries are voracious predators, feeding on fish eggs and larvae, mollusks, copepod crustaceans, and even other sea-gooseberries. They catch prey using their long tentacles, which act as a net and have adhesive cells known as colloblasts. The tentacles are then 'reeled in' and the prey is passed to the mouth."
We look forward to lots of new interactions with the terrific student body at Northeastern University--so students, keep those specimens and samples coming!
Learn more about this species at the Encyclopedia of Life website.
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Coming Soon... Shrinking Sharks and a Fall Appeal
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The tiger shark, or Galeocerdo cuvier, pictured here, are among the shark species observed to show decreases in average body size (credit: Albert Koi; source: Wikimedia Commons).
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Congratulations to Dr. Steven Scyphers, currently a postdoctoral researcher at Northeastern University's
Marine Science Center, for his contribution to an award-winning paper using historical data to document declining body size in shark species in the Gulf of Mexico. In our next issue, we will take up this important phenomenon being seen around the world--the declining body size of many of the world's most important fish species.
Also in our next issue we will be asking you for your help in our annual Fall Appeal. Once a year we ask you for the generous contributions that support OGL throughout the rest of the year. We are looking forward to hearing from you so that we can continue serving you and the Ocean that we love in the coming year. |
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Want to help OGL document and preserve the spectacular genetic diversity of our world's oceans?
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Thank you for your continued support!
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