Upside-Down but Headed in the Right Direction: Review of the Highly Versatile Cassiopea xamachana System

Creators: Ohdera, Aki H.; Abrams, Michael J.

Abstract

The upside-down jellyfish Cassiopea xamachana (Scyphozoa: Rhizostomeae) has been predominantly studied to understand its interaction with the endosymbiotic dinoflagellate algae Symbiodinium. As an easily culturable and tractable cnidarian model, it is an attractive alternative to stony corals to understanding the mechanisms driving establishment and maintenance of symbiosis. Cassiopea is also unique in requiring the symbiont in order to complete its transition to the adult stage, thereby providing an excellent model to understand symbiosis-driven development and evolution. Recently, the Cassiopea research system has gained interest beyond symbiosis in fields related to embryology, climate ecology, behavior, and more. With these developments, resources including genomes, transcriptomes, and laboratory protocols are steadily increasing. This review provides an overview of the broad range of interdisciplinary research that has utilized the Cassiopea model and highlights the advantages of using the model for future research.

Additional Information

© 2018 Ohdera, Abrams, Ames, Baker, Suescún-Bolívar, Collins, Freeman, Gamero-Mora, Goulet, Hofmann, Jaimes-Becerra, Long, Marques, Miller, Mydlarz, Morandini, Newkirk, Putri, Samson, Stampar, Steinworth, Templeman, Thomé, Vlok, Woodley, Wong, Martindale, Fitt and Medina. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Received: 29 January 2018; Accepted: 20 March 2018; Published: 09 April 2018. We'd like to thank Todd LaJeunesse, Yixian Zheng, and Chen-Ming Fan for providing comments on the manuscript. Some of the images used in Figure 1 were provided by Todd LaJeunesse and Priyanka Kanti Solanki. Many thanks to Jon Norenburg who, as the chair of Invertebrate Zoology at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, supported our endeavors to create the Aquaroom, thereby facilitating many interesting observations of Cassiopea polyps and medusae (some acquired from the National Aquarium) by some coauthors and Aquaroom interns. Financial support was provided from Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) projects 2011/50242-5, 2015/21007-9, 2015/24408-4, 2017/50028-0 and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) project 304961/2016-7, 404121/2016-0. Author Contributions: AO, MA, DB, LS-B, CF, EG-M, AJ-B, PL, ACMo, LM, LDM, ACMa, CN, SP, JS, SS, BS, MT, PT, MV, CW, JW, and MQM: Provided written text for the sections within the manuscript; CA, AC, DH, TG, WF, and MM: provided expertise and edits to the manuscript. We dedicate this manuscript to Robert Trench, who inspired many of us to begin working in Cassiopea. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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