Current lab members:

• Eric RÖTTINGER, DR2 CNRS
• Aldine AMIEL, IR2 INSERM (70%)
• Renaud REBILLARD, TCS CNRS (20%)
• Dilara DIKEN, PhD student Ulysseus
• Kai HOFMAENNER, PhD student CNRS
• Mickael WURTZ, PhD student UniCA
• Rila Hilma, IE UniCA

Lab Alumni:

• Rita ANDREONI, PhD student
• Aurore Vullien, PhD Student
• Nicolas Haupaix, Postdoc

Certain marine animals such as cnidarians (sea anemones, corals and “jellyfish) possess so-called whole body regenerative capacities, as they can reform fully functional organisms from most isolated body parts or even dissociated cells. Another interesting property of symbiotic cnidarians is their ability to resists and adapt to high environmental stress, such as expositions to intracellular ROS, at levels known to be devastating for mammalian cells by enhancing the aging process. Importantly, this extreme regenerative potential, the impressive ROS resistance and plasticity to adapt to drastic environmental variations are accompanied by an extended lifespan / immortality in a large set of these marine animals. 

We take advantage of these interesting and intriguing biological features of cnidarians to decipher their underlying cellular, molecular, biochemical and genetic mechanisms. Our multidisciplinary and integrative research developed with local, national and international academic collaborators aims to obtain a novel view of cnidarian regeneration, stress response and extreme longevity. Ultimately, our research will participate in improving our understanding of how these marine invertebrates prevent aging and age-related diseases, discoveries that will subsequently be transferred to vertebrate/human related research within the IRCAN and our network of collaborators with the long-term goal of creating novel opportunities for regenerative medicine and aging research.

Our principal research aims focusing on complementary anthozoan cnidarian research models, particularly the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis are:

A) Characterize the tissular, cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying whole body regeneration.

B) Understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms responsible for the high environmental stress resistance.

C) Determine how cnidarians prevent aging and aging-related diseases.

Resources developed by the team are available as soon as possible through freely accessible and intuitive online repositories (e.g. nvertx.kahikai.org). In addition to our research, members of the team are intensely involved in fostering interdisciplinary research (e.g. IFR MARRES) and teaching activities at the University Nice Sophia Antipolis and Université Côte d’Azur / University Cote d’Azur (e.g. MSc MARRES, imAGEin) as well as outreach activities (workshops, conferences, photo exhibitions) in tight interaction with the non-profit organization Kahi Kai (www.kahikai.org) in order to promote the importance of marine organisms for fundamental as well as applied aging research.

Current Projects

Most Recent Publications from the lab

• Whole body regeneration deploys a rewired embryonic gene regulatory network logic
  11 décembre 2025 par Rita Andreoni-Pham
  A long-held hypothesis in regeneration proposes that developmental processes are re-deployed during regeneration. To investigate this, we compared embryonic and regeneration gene regulatory networks (GRN) in the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis using transcriptomic time series spanning these two developmental trajectories. Here, we show that regeneration reuses cohorts of the embryonic genes along with a small set of genes whose expression dynamics are specific to regeneration. We identified…
• Optimized husbandry and targeted gene-editing for the cnidarian Nematostella vectensis
  8 janvier 2025 par João E Carvalho
  Optimized laboratory conditions for research models are crucial for the success of scientific projects. This includes controlling the entire life cycle, having access to all developmental stages and maintaining stable physiological conditions. Reducing the life cycle of a research model can also enhance the access to biological material and speed up genetic tool development. Thus, we optimized the rearing conditions for the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis, a cnidarian research model, to study…
• The Rich Evolutionary History of the Reactive Oxygen Species Metabolic Arsenal Shapes Its Mechanistic Plasticity at the Onset of Metazoan Regeneration
  14 décembre 2024 par Aurore Vullien
  Regeneration, the ability to restore body parts after injury, is widespread in metazoans; however, the underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms involved in this process remain largely unknown, and its evolutionary history is consequently unresolved. Recently, reactive oxygen species (ROS) have been shown in several metazoan models to be triggers of apoptosis and cell proliferation that drive regenerative success. However, it is not known whether the contribution of ROS to regeneration relies…
• Telomere DNA length regulation is influenced by seasonal temperature differences in short-lived but not in long-lived reef-building corals
  1 juin 2023 par Alice Rouan
  Telomeres are environment-sensitive regulators of health and aging. Here,we present telomere DNA length analysis of two reef-building coral genera revealing that the long- and short-term water thermal regime is a key driver of between-colony variation across the Pacific Ocean. Notably, there are differences between the two studied genera. The telomere DNA lengths of the short-lived, more stress-sensitive Pocillopora spp. colonies were largely determined by seasonal temperature variation, whereas…
• Open science resources from the Tara Pacific expedition across coral reef and surface ocean ecosystems
  1 juin 2023 par Fabien Lombard
  The Tara Pacific expedition (2016-2018) sampled coral ecosystems around 32 islands in the Pacific Ocean and the ocean surface waters at 249 locations, resulting in the collection of nearly 58 000 samples. The expedition was designed to systematically study warm-water coral reefs and included the collection of corals, fish, plankton, and seawater samples for advanced biogeochemical, molecular, and imaging analysis. Here we provide a complete description of the sampling methodology, and we explain…
• Embracing the diversity of model systems to deconstruct the basis of regeneration and tissue repair
  31 janvier 2023 par Aldine R Amiel
  The eighth EMBO conference in the series 'The Molecular and Cellular Basis of Regeneration and Tissue Repair' took place in Barcelona (Spain) in September 2022. A total of 173 researchers from across the globe shared their latest advances in deciphering the molecular and cellular basis of wound healing, tissue repair and regeneration, as well as their implications for future clinical applications. The conference showcased an ever-expanding diversity of model organisms used to identify mechanisms…
• Mechano-biochemical marine stimulation of inversion, gastrulation, and endomesoderm specification in multicellular Eukaryota
  19 décembre 2022 par Ngoc Minh Nguyen
  The evolutionary emergence of the primitive gut in Metazoa is one of the decisive events that conditioned the major evolutionary transition, leading to the origin of animal development. It is thought to have been induced by the specification of the endomesoderm (EM) into the multicellular tissue and its invagination (i.e., gastrulation). However, the biochemical signals underlying the evolutionary emergence of EM specification and gastrulation remain unknown. Herein, we find that hydrodynamic…
• Creating a User-Friendly and Open-Access Gene Expression Database for Comparing Embryonic Development and Regeneration in Nematostella vectensis
  1 avril 2022 par Olivier Croce
  The sea anemone Nematostella vectensis has emerged as a powerful research model to understand at the gene regulatory network level, to what extend regeneration recapitulates embryonic development. Such comparison involves massive transcriptomic analysis, a routine approach for identifying differential gene expression. Here we present a workflow to build a user-friendly, mineable, and open-access database providing access to the scientific community to various RNAseq datasets.
• Articulating the "stem cell niche" paradigm through the lens of non-model aquatic invertebrates
  21 janvier 2022 par P Martinez
  Stem cells (SCs) in vertebrates typically reside in "stem cell niches" (SCNs), morphologically restricted tissue microenvironments that are important for SC survival and proliferation. SCNs are broadly defined by properties including physical location, but in contrast to vertebrates and other "model" organisms, aquatic invertebrate SCs do not have clearly documented niche outlines or properties. Life strategies such as regeneration or asexual reproduction may have conditioned the niche…
• Nematostella vectensis, an Emerging Model for Deciphering the Molecular and Cellular Mechanisms Underlying Whole-Body Regeneration
  23 octobre 2021 par Eric Röttinger
  The capacity to regenerate lost or injured body parts is a widespread feature within metazoans and has intrigued scientists for centuries. One of the most extreme types of regeneration is the so-called whole body regenerative capacity, which enables regeneration of fully functional organisms from isolated body parts. While not exclusive to this habitat, whole body regeneration is widespread in aquatic/marine invertebrates. Over the past decade, new whole-body research models have emerged that…
• A pan-metazoan concept for adult stem cells: the wobbling Penrose landscape
  7 octobre 2021 par Baruch Rinkevich
  Adult stem cells (ASCs) in vertebrates and model invertebrates (e.g. Drosophila melanogaster) are typically long-lived, lineage-restricted, clonogenic and quiescent cells with somatic descendants and tissue/organ-restricted activities. Such ASCs are mostly rare, morphologically undifferentiated, and undergo asymmetric cell division. Characterized by 'stemness' gene expression, they can regulate tissue/organ homeostasis, repair and regeneration. By contrast, analysis of other animal phyla shows…
• A trio of mechanisms involved in regeneration initiation in animals
  28 avril 2021 par Aurore Vullien
  Whole-body and complex structure regeneration is a widespread phenomenon in animals. While regenerative abilities vary greatly from one species to another, a number of mechanisms appear essential for regeneration in distantly related phylogenetic groups. In this review, we synthetize the knowledge gathered on the implication of three mechanisms that appear to be important for the initiation of regeneration in animals. Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) are metabolic by-products involved in cell…
• The sea anemone Nematostella vectensis, an emerging model for biomedical research: Mechano-sensitivity, extreme regeneration and longevity
  16 février 2021 par Aldine R Amiel
  Nematostella has fascinating features such as whole-body regeneration, the absence of signs of aging and importantly, the absence of age-related diseases. Easy to culture and spawn, this little sea anemone in spite of its "simple" aspect, displays interesting morphological characteristics similar to vertebrates and an unexpected similarity in gene content/genome organization. Importantly, the scientific community working on Nematostella is developing a variety of functional genomics tools that…
• Cnidarian Cell Cryopreservation: A Powerful Tool for Cultivation and Functional Assays
  1 décembre 2020 par Clara Fricano
  Cnidarian primary cell cultures have a strong potential to become a universal tool to assess stress-response mechanisms at the cellular level. However, primary cell cultures are time-consuming regarding their establishment and maintenance. Cryopreservation is a commonly used approach to provide stable cell stocks for experiments, but it is yet to be established for Cnidarian cell cultures. The aim of this study was therefore to design a cryopreservation protocol for primary cell cultures of the…
• Horizontal acquisition of Symbiodiniaceae in the Anemonia viridis (Cnidaria, Anthozoa) species complex
  29 novembre 2020 par Barbara Porro
  All metazoans are in fact holobionts, resulting from the association of several organisms, and organismal adaptation is then due to the composite response of this association to the environment. Deciphering the mechanisms of symbiont acquisition in a holobiont is therefore essential to understanding the extent of its adaptive capacities. In cnidarians, some species acquire their photosynthetic symbionts directly from their parents (vertical transmission) but may also acquire symbionts from the…
• Experimental Tools to Study Regeneration in the Sea Anemone Nematostella vectensis
  19 octobre 2020 par Aldine R Amiel
  Animal regeneration is a biological process leading to the reformation of injured or lost tissues/body parts. One of the most fascinating regenerative phenomena is the so-called whole-body regeneration, leading to the reformation of fully functional organisms within days after bisection. The sea anemone Nematostella vectensis is currently emerging as novel whole-body regeneration model. Here we describe the methods of inducing the regenerative process in this cnidarian as well as the fixation…
• Transcriptomic Analysis in the Sea Anemone Nematostella vectensis
  19 octobre 2020 par Jacob F Warner
  The sea anemone Nematostella vectensis is an emerging research model to study embryonic development and regeneration at the molecular and global transcriptomic level. Transcriptomics analysis is now routinely used to detect differential expression at the genome level. Here we present the latest procedures for isolating high-quality RNA required for next generation sequencing, as well as methods and resources for quantifying transcriptomic data.
• The Diversity of Muscles and Their Regenerative Potential across Animals
  23 août 2020 par Letizia Zullo
  Cells with contractile functions are present in almost all metazoans, and so are the related processes of muscle homeostasis and regeneration. Regeneration itself is a complex process unevenly spread across metazoans that ranges from full-body regeneration to partial reconstruction of damaged organs or body tissues, including muscles. The cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in regenerative processes can be homologous, co-opted, and/or evolved independently. By comparing the mechanisms of…
• Detection of tetraploidization in chromophobe renal cell carcinoma: Insights and pitfalls
  14 juillet 2020 par Ilaria Di Mauro
  Chromosomal losses resulting in a marked hypodiploidy are a specificity of chromophobe renal cell carcinoma (ChRCC), the third most frequent type of kidney cancer. Its detection is useful in challenging cases. However some ChRCC, especially the eosinophilic variant, do not exhibit hypodiploidy and deserve to be better explored. Using comparative genomic hybridization (array-CGH) we observed chromosomal gains in five cases of nonmetastatic ChRCC. Our objective was to determine whether these…
• 7th Euro Evo Devo meeting: Report on the "Evolution of regeneration in Metazoa" symposium
  29 août 2019 par Eve Gazave
  Regeneration, the ability to restore lost parts of the body, is a widespread phenomenon in animals. While this ability is somehow limited in classical developmental model organisms, a variety of animals are able to regenerate complex structures such as limbs or important parts of their body, upon injury. Despite the recent emergence of regenerative studies using a large variety of metazoans, we still lack a general view of the evolution of animal regeneration. In the context of the 7th EvoDevo…

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