TELOTHERM – Linking telomere to thermal effects in cnidaria (PI: Eric GILSON; 2024 – 2028). Better understanding the response mechanisms to thermal stress will make it possible to provide sustainable solutions to the challenges of global warming on the biosphere. Our recently published analyzes of two types of reef corals sampled across the Pacific Ocean during the Tara-Pacific expedition (Pocillopora meandrina and Porites lobata) allow us to approach this question from a new angle since they revealed that these two species have evolved specific telomeric regulatory mechanisms in response to thermal changes.

TELOTHERM aims to explore the connections between telomeres and temperature in cnidarians and their impact on the organism’s performance. This objective will be made possible by studies combining the use of Tara-Pacific data, longitudinal field studies, thermal experiments under controlled aquarium conditions and mechanistic studies with the model sea anemone Nematostalla vectensis. He also benefited from the expertise of the two TELOTHERM teams, one an expert in telomere biology for a long time and recently developing studies on coral telomeres (EG), and the other in biology, regeneration & longevity of cnidarians (ER ).

Based on our published and unpublished data, we built the TELOTHERM project to understand and compare telomere interactions and thermal effects in three types of cnidarians: i) Nematostella vectensis (Nv) as an anemone model sea fish of extreme longevity and regeneration suitable for genome editing by CRISPR/Cas9 and functional studies in controlled contexts; ii) two hard reef corals differing in their life history traits and for which we have an extensive environmental and molecular data set of colony samples collected during the Tara-Pacific expedition (2016-2018) : the branched coral with a short lifespan and sensitive to stress. Pocillopora spp and the massive coral Porites spp, resistant to stress and long-lived.