Evolution guarantees this sea anemone doesn’t need a stress test. Credit: Norbert Bieberstein/istockphoto.com
Though the starlet sea anemone, a translucent marine creature as long as a credit card, may appear helpless, years of evolution have prepared it for any attack nature or humans have in store. Rather than spikes, teeth or claws, the soft anemone, a native to the coasts of New England, defends itself with its genes.
While humans stress about bees and mortgage payments, the anemone’s anxieties concern starvation, suffocation, pollution and coastal development. Despite the laundry list, it is a thriving family of creatures. Cousins of the starlet sea anemone can be found over a range of temperatures and conditions. Their secret is a wide variety of stress-response genes, which define immediately against toxins, osmotic shock, illness and physical wounds.
This knowledge of the creature’s biology didn’t emerge through observational studies. Instead, it was made possible by the recently-acquired ability to compare genomes. By plugging DNA sequences from the sea anemone into a genetic database, John R. Finnerty, a biology professor at Boston University, compared genes known to have a role in stress-response with the genomes of related creatures. With this information he now has a few guesses as to how sea anemone’s evolved to be so resilient.
“[The starlet sea anemone] is known to harbor extensive genetic variation,” Finnerty writes in the paper. “This suggests that the natural dispersal ability of the animals may be quite limited, that local adaptation may be driving genetic differentiation, or a combination of both.”
Being that the anemone can survive most conditions, especially at the local level, Finnerty sees the creatures’ as canaries in the coal mine for salt marshes. Meaning that if the anemones start to go, the area is in serious trouble.
His findings were pulished in the June issue of The Biological Bulletin, located at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.