p1: So why do you use tunicates as an experimental model?
p1: Which advantages could you get by using these organisms?
p1: Well, I really started studying fertilization in sea urchins
p1: but then I realised that I got more and more interested in this question of
p1: mosaic development, of why is information in some particular eggs
p1: and the ascidian was the best for that
p1: localised so that you can predict where the muscle information is, where the
p1: neural information is and so I got really fascinated with this problem and clearly
p1: the ascidian historically was considered the most
p1: um, amenable to
p1: this kind of question so that was basically why I started working on ascidians.
p1: I was really attracted to this question of what is called mosaic development, and
p1: when you're interested in such a question then you have to
p1: the next question is ask the right questions to the right organism
p1: and after reading the literature I decided the ascidian was the best model to study
p1: that question of where is information located in the egg to give
p1: different parts of the embryos?
p1: Could how or why you started working on tunicates?
p1: Um well for the reasons that I explained before
p1: that is, I was fascinated with this problem of localization of information in the egg
p1: to give different parts of the embryos.
p1: Um while talking with an American colleague Lionel Jaffe
p1: I had this long conversation on the beach with him, and I think he encouraged me
p1: very much to study ascidians
p1: and it also was interesting for me to study ascidians because I had helped
p1: another colleague here in Villefranche, Zalokar, who uh
p1: I helped him with his experiments with Phallusia mammillata so that's why
p1: I started actually, uh working on this particular model
p1: and it turned out to be a good one for this question.
p1: So, could you tell us a short story or funny experiment with tunicates?
p1: We used to go collect these ascidians
p1: in Sète, which is a town about 3 hours
p1: from here because there were many in a laguna, and we would grow embryos
p1: so we would stay there for 2 or 3 days, and we would take all the students,
p1: particularly the new students, um and that was a way for them to get to know
p1: the rest of the team, and we would do things together
p1: sometimes we would work all night
p1: to grow the embryos and so on so that was a really funny occasion
p1: and we had this tradition of having students eat
p1: um ascidians instead they eat Violet which is a particular ascidian species
p1: and so the ritual was to give
p1: a Violet to eat to the newcomers and they had never had eaten it
p1: and one year we had this bright student who ate his Violet and then
p1: I could see that he refrained from being really disgusted
p1: and it turned out when we looked that we had given him a Violet
p1: that was decaying, uh rotting away
p1: so that was kind of a bad joke
p1: an unwanted bad joke
p1: for the initiation ritual.
p1: So how do you imagine the future of these organisms in experimental biology?
p1: How about in teaching?
p1: Um it looks like the sizes of the communities are pretty stable actually.
p1: Um ascidians and appendicularians
p1: On ascidians, I think it's viable because there's maybe I don't know
p1: 50 laboratories working
p1: in different parts of the world.
p1: In appendicularians, it's a little small to survive
p1: And um, I think people have to wonder
p1: what questions to ask to this particular model that makes it
p1: um
p1: have a huge advantage
p1: compared with the other major models, and um
p1: I hope that the community reflects on that because
p1: otherwise, it may be very difficult to attract young people to this field
p1: when they have enormous communities on a few other major models
p1: so I don't know how these things will turn out.
p1: It's not clear. I think for cellular processes and um
p1: as we get deep into the cellular mechanisms, the ascidian has a
p1: big advantage, so this may draw a lot of
p1: people to the community, and for imaging of course, so this may uh
p1: cause a renewed attraction to the model.