January 30 @ 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Dr. Frank van Breukelen
Director and Professor, School of Life Sciences
University of Nevada
“Being too plastic for variable environments: physiological plasticity in the protoendothermic tenrec (Tenrec ecaudatus)”
Abstract: We typically think that plasticity confers advantages for changing environments. But what happens when an animal is too plastic? Tenrecs are enigmatic placental mammals from Madagascar that have many ‘ancestral’ traits e.g. they possess a cloaca, the smallest brain of any extant mammal, no functional corpus callosum, and a variety of other features more ancestral than even the reconstructed placental mammal ancestor, Schrewdinger. We posited this animal might then give us insight into the physiology of an early placental mammal. Tenrecs have remarkable plasticity- they have as much as a 25 fold variation in resting oxygen consumption rates, body temperatures may be as low as 12°C in fully ambulatory and active tenrecs and 28°C in hibernating tenrecs, gestation may range from 40 to 90 d, tenrecs may grow as much as 25% in a day and experience indeterminate growth, and tenrecs are capable of superfetation. Much of this metabolic plasticity is accomplished through sequestration of blood to the spleen which may vary in size by 14-fold. The consequences of this variability is a pulsatile homeostasis at the organ and cellular level. ESI MS proteomics reveal that more than 50% of proteins change in abundance during torpor. This contrasts sharply to Boreoeutherian (‘modern’) mammals where hibernation arrests animals in a quasi-homeostatic state and there are few transcript or protein abundance changes. We hypothesized that poor homeostasis limited the success of mammals like tenrecs and that Boreoeutherian mammals were so successful because of an ability to maintain a high and stable metabolism that supported a more consistent homeostatic state.
Host: Max Plikus
Seminar will be held in person only.
Developmental & Cell Biology Fall 2024 Seminar Series
Each quarter the Department of Developmental and Cell Biology hosts a weekly seminar. The purpose of these seminars is to enable experts from around the country to share their newest discoveries and ideas with our students and faculty. Seminars are held on Thursdays at 11:00 a.m., in Natural Sciences II room 4201.
For questions about this event, please contact Mayra Rubio at mrubio3@uci.edu.