Genetic determinants of organismal resilience (TrichoScreen)

The well-being of an organism depends on environmental conditions and on the organism's ability to adapt its internal processes to changing external conditions. TrichoScreen establishes Trichoplax adhaerens, the smallest known animal, as a model organism to study how various environmental factors such as pH, temperature, salinity, and pollution affect its structure, fitness, and behavior. Trichoplax adhaerens is well suited for large-scale studies of these phenotypes because it reproduces easily in saltwater under laboratory conditions, feeds on algae, has a small, diploid, and easily accessible genome, and its transparency allows imaging of cellular phenotypes throughout the organism. 
Because organisms sense changes via receptors that trigger different signaling cascades to alter their gene regulatory program, perturbations of key genes known to play a role in development and tissue homeostasis in different environments are being studied. Hundreds of conditions can be studied in parallel using the experimental high-throughput screening platform.