Hi my name is Stephanie Bértrand, associate professor of Sorbonne University of Paris
but I work here in the marine station of Banyuls-sur-Mer.
I've always been fascinated by the diversity of forms in the animal kingdom
and as the morphology is the result of embryonic and post-embryonic development.
My main interest is to try to understand
how the evolution of developmental mechanisms
led to the diversity of body plans we can observe in animals.
My main focus is on the chordate clade of animals,
this is why I use the cephalochordate amphioxus as a model system in the lab.
I am Salvatore D'Aniello, researcher at the
Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn in Naples, in Italy
and we use amphioxus as a model system in the lab
for its phylogenetic position in the tree of life,
and because we have access to several available genomes,
and for its body plan and morphological characteristics
shared with the rest of chordates - the phylum to which we belong too.
I'm interested in molecular evolution and development and I use amphioxus
to study the role of nitric oxide in the development of the mouth.
Together with my colleague Salvatore we will present you our favorite animal,
which is the cephalochordate amphioxus.
In the first chapter you will discover a little bit of the history
of amphioxus in biological studies,
and then in the second chapter we will talk about
basic knowledge of amphioxus biology
like its morphology, its life cycle, and its embryonic development.
In Chapter 3 we will see the phylogenetic position
of cephalochordates in the tree of life,
and in Chapter 4 we will see how different species of amphioxus
are used in the lab to answer genome evolution and evo-devo questions.
When you will come to the Schmitt Training Course, you will have the possibility
to manipulate adult amphioxus, living adult amphioxus
and will also work with fixed embryos
in order to perform immunostaining experiments.
Hope you will enjoy it and see you soon!