Press release: Do spiders need extra genes to spin their webs?

Nr. 186/2014 - 22.08.2014

Developmental biologists from Göttingen sequence all active genes of the common house spider

(pug) The common house spider has significantly more active genes than humans. In addition, these spiders possess all the key genes that also control embryonic development in humans. These are the conclusions of a study by an international research team led by scientists at the Göttingen Center for Molecular Biosciences (GZMB) of Göttingen University. Employing the latest sequencing methods, the scientists deciphered all genes, which are active throughout the life of the common house spider Parasteatoda tepidariorum. The results have been published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.

While humans activate approximately 25,000 genes during their lifetime, the spider has up to 60,000 such genes. Why spiders require over twice as many active genes than humans is still an open question. "We suspect that the spider has duplicated its genome during evolution. This additional genetic material could have enabled them to evolve new features like the ability to spin silk to build their webs or to produce venoms to kill their prey,“ explains Dr. Nico Posnien who led the study at Department of Developmental Biology of Göttingen University. "We expect that deciphering the complete genome will provide some answers to these open questions, and therefore we have already started working on genome sequencing.“

For more than 50 years research on the genes and mechanisms for organ formation in animals has primarily been performed on the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Over the last ten years, however, the common house spider has been introduced as an alternative research model. Important findings were obtained with another spider species already in 2003: "Previous results on body segmentation of the fruit fly embryo did not imply significant similarities to vertebrates, the animal group that also includes humans. By contrast, in spiders this important process in embryonic development not only mechanistically resembles that of vertebrates, but is also controlled by the same genes,“ adds co-author Dr. Nikola-Michael Prpic-Schäper.

Meanwhile, developmental biologists have begun investigating the mechanisms underlying the development of several organs in the common house spider, e.g. the brain, the appendages and the eyes. They hope to use the new findings to provide more comprehensive answers to the question about similarities between organ development in animals and humans. In addition, the many spider-specific genes now discovered in the new study may also answer the question what actually makes a spider a spider. "This is potentially relevant to elucidate how spiders produce silk and venoms and what components these are made of. This knowledge can subsequently be used for industrial and medical purposes,“ notes Dr. Posnien.

Original publication: Nico Posnien et al. "A comprehensive reference transcriptome resource for the common house spider Parasteatoda tepidariorum”, PLOS ONE, Doi: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0104885

Contact address:
Dr. Nico Posnien / Dr. Nikola-Michael Prpic-Schäper
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach Institute of Zoology and Anthropology
Department of Developmental Biology
Justus-von-Liebig-Weg 11, 37077 Göttingen
Germany
Phone (0551) 39-20817
E-mail: nposnie@gwdg.de, nprpic@gwdg.de
Internet: https://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/posnien-nico-dr-----developmental-biology-uni-bio/415209.html,
www.gwdg.de/~nprpic