Boyen, J.

De Troch, M.

Fink, P.

Mensens, C.

Wellens, S.

Open Marine Archive

12 
Oral presentation Pre-doc level 
Unraveling fatty acid bioconversion in harpacticoid copepods facing a 
changing environment  
Boyen Jens1, Fink Patrick2, Mensens Christoph1, Wellens Siel1 and De Troch Marleen1 
1  University of Gent, Department of Biology, Research group Marine Biology, Campus Sterre, 
Krijgslaan 281/S8, B - 9000 Ghent, Belgium 
  E-mail: jens.boyen@ugent.be    
2  Institute of Zoology, University of Cologne, Zülpicher Straße 47b, 50674 Köln, Germany  
 
As climate change is a global challenge that affects everyone, everywhere, reducing its impacts 
is a key action point of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 13: take urgent action to 
combat climate change and its impacts). Shifts in oceanographic conditions such as temperature 
and pCO2 are affecting the physiological performance and productivity of organisms in coastal 
food webs and thereby threatening the overall functioning of the coastal ecosystem. A better 
understanding of the physiological response and adaptive capacity of coastal marine organisms 
is critical to assess their fate and to conserve coastal ecosystems in a rapidly changing ocean 
(SDG 14: conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources). 
 
Harpacticoid copepods are a dominant component of estuarine benthic meiofauna, efficient 
grazers on diatoms, and a major food source for juvenile fish. They are known to contain high 
levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), which are essential dietary constituents for fish 
and humans as the latter can’t produce these omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids themselves. 
Harpacticoid copepods on the other hand are able to bioconvert PUFAs that originate from 
primary producers. This capacity might be an essential strategy for harpacticoid copepods to 
respond quickly to environmental changes, since climate change reduces the amount of PUFAs 
within primary producers, and thus, their availability for higher tropic levels. 
 
Our research aims to uncover the genetic pathways of PUFA bioconversion in harpacticoid 
copepods and how these mechanisms respond following a combination of a reduced PUFA diet 
and realistic future warming. Our species of interest is Platychelipus littoralis, a harpacticoid 
copepod occurring abundantly in the Westerscheldt estuary. We generated RNA-Seq data and 
fatty acid profiles from P. littoralis subjected to different diet and temperature treatments. Even 
when fed a PUFA-deficient diet (i.e. the chlorophyte Dunaliella tertiolecta), P. littoralis always 
maintains sufficient PUFA levels compared with a control treatment. By means of a de novo 
transcriptome assembly and subsequent annotation and differential gene expression analysis, 
we are able to link the fatty acid profiles to potential PUFA bioconversion-related genes. 
 
Keywords: Transcriptomics; Global change; Harpacticoid copepods; Fatty acid metabolism 
  


Unraveling fatty acid bioconversion in harpacticoid copepods facing a changing environment

http://www.vliz.be/imisdocs/publications/324888.pdf

Unraveling fatty acid bioconversion in harpacticoid copepods facing a changing environment

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