Excited to present this preprint! Many know the Hawaiian bobtail squid as a study system for symbiosis with Vibrio fischeri. In the past few years, the cephalopod resource center at MBL/Woods Hole has developed the Hummingbird bobtail squid as a model. We asked how it performs during symbiosis. 🧵 - ThreadSky

markjmandel.bsky.social • 132 days ago

Excited to present this preprint! Many know the Hawaiian bobtail squid as a study system for symbiosis with Vibrio fischeri. In the past few years, the cephalopod resource center at MBL/Woods Hole has developed the Hummingbird bobtail squid as a model. We asked how it performs during symbiosis. 🧵

Reposted from bioRxiv Microbiology

Euprymna berryi as a comparative model host for Vibrio fischeri light organ symbiosis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.10.632448v1

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markjmandel.bsky.social•132 days ago

First, why the Hummingbird bobtail squid (Euprymna berryi)? It is hardy through multiple generations in the lab, and gene knockouts have been successfully completed in this strain, raising the prospect for host-directed tools. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37343558/

markjmandel.bsky.social•132 days ago

We started by isolating symbionts from the Hummingbird bobtail squid, and found that like the Hawaiian host, there is strong specificity with only being colonized by Vibrio fischeri.

markjmandel.bsky.social•132 days ago

Fluorescent protein-expressing strains revealed the crypt structure of the Hummingbird bobtail squid light organ, which strongly resembled that of the Hawaiian bobtail (3 crypts x 2 sides = 6 crypts per animal).

markjmandel.bsky.social•132 days ago

Bacterial mutants that fail to engage in flagellar motility, SYP biofilm, or produce the symbiotic luminescence had identical phenotypes in the Hummingbird bobtail as they have in the Hawaiian bobtail squid.

markjmandel.bsky.social•132 days ago

Finally, early host responses to symbiosis including apoptosis and hemocyte migration are conserved in the Hummingbird bobtail.

markjmandel.bsky.social•132 days ago

Overall, our work suggests that the Hummingbird bobtail squid (the bigger one!) is likely to be a valuable comparative model for mechanistic studies of symbiosis.

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