Philip Rosenstiel

Understanding the evolution of metaorganisms, composed of a multicellular host and its associated microbiota, is a fundamental topic in biology and medicine. Basal marine invertebrates allow an insight into the early co-evolution between bacteria and innate immune response machinery. Genetically distinct invasion waves of the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi offer the opportunity to test immune learning and pre-adaptation to associated microbiota in this unexplored phylum. In a common garden experiment ctenophores of different genotypes will be repeatedly exposed to previously known or unknown (novel) bacteria. Expression of immune genes together with microbiota composition after this treatment will be assessed through next generation sequencing. The results will allow new insight into the plasticity of the very basal immune pathways in co-evolution with associated microbiota.