The pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis
- PDF / 1,566,900 Bytes
- 10 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 4 Downloads / 194 Views
Kuroda and Abe EvoDevo (2020)11:24 https://doi.org/10.1186/s13227-020-00169-4
Open Access
REVIEW
The pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis Reiko Kuroda* and Masanori Abe
Abstract The freshwater snail Lymnaea stagnalis has a long research history, but only relatively recently has it emerged as an attractive model organism to study molecular mechanisms in the areas of developmental biology and translational medicine such as learning/memory and neurodegenerative diseases. The species has the advantage of being a hermaphrodite and can both cross- and self-mate, which greatly facilitates genetic approaches. The establishment of body-handedness, or chiromorphogenesis, is a major topic of study, since chirality is evident in the shell coiling. Chirality is maternally inherited, and only recently a gene-editing approach identified the actin-related gene Lsdia1 as the key handedness determinant. This short article reviews the natural habitat, life cycle, major research questions and interests, and experimental approaches. Keywords: Chiromorphogenesis, Spiral cleavage, Learning/memory, Neurodegenerative diseases, Schistosomiasis, CRISPR/Cas9 Natural habitat and life cycle Lymnaea stagnalis is a freshwater snail, commonly known as the great pond snail. It belongs to the phylum Mollusca, class Gastropoda and family Lymnaeidae [1–3]. It is widely distributed in freshwater habitats over large parts of Europe, North America and Asia except its most southern region [4]. L. stagnalis prefers living in waters that flow slowly or in stagnant water bodies and occupies shallow pond margins with dense vegetation where it usually feeds on algae or decaying plants. It turns carnivorous at times and preys on newts and smallsized fish or its peer snails. It is a pulmonate and thus, in addition to the usual inhale/exhale oxygen from water, it breathes with its lungs by moving frequently to the surface to inhale air [3]. This trait allows adaptation to oxygen-poor environments. Although hermaphroditic, sexually mature L. stagnalis prefer cross-fertilization as is common in the freshwater pulmonates [5]. They can perform both female and male roles in mating. Copulation behavior and reproductive biology have been reviewed elsewhere [6, 7]. The snails *Correspondence: [email protected] Frontier Research Institute, Chubu University, 1200 Matsumoto‑cho, Kasugai, Aichi 487‑8501, Japan
lay eggs on weeds and other pond objects in large masses of about 2–6 cm, and which contain 50–120 eggs. Each egg, dark/intense yellow in color, measures about 100 μm in diameter, and is contained in an oval-shaped capsule (Fig. 1). Adult snails are 3–5 and 2–3 cm in shell length and width, respectively. Their size depends on the volume of water [3], with larger individuals found in large ponds [3]. The snail bodies are yellowish grey. Adults’ shells are yellow–brown in color, while immature/young snails have more translucent shells.
Field collection and lab culture Strains of L. stagnalis are kept in many laboratories around the world for various biological r
Data Loading...
