Authors: Libby Heath, Kyle Cink, Thomas Petitjean, Ainsley Parkins, Sylvia Lee, Rodolfo S Probst, Matias Giglio, Baldomero Olivera, Macy Olivera
Mentors: Rodolfo S Probst
Insitution: University of Utah
Natural product-derived compounds occupy a wider chemical space than those synthetically obtained. Different invertebrate groups have emerged in recent times as a reliable source for novel pharmacological targets. A recent promising source for those compounds is marine gastropods. Despite their ubiquity, those organisms remain understudied, with the diversity of small marine gastropods (micromollusks of <1cm) in SE Asia–a hotspot for those mollusks–, still largely unexplored. In the Philippines, micromollusks are usually sampled by local fishermen with the traditional method known as lumun-lumun, involving placing fish nets in different water depths creating an “ecosystem” for mollusk’s larval settlement. The combination of bioprospecting importance and neglected systematic studies for SE Asian micromollusks press for the implementation of Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) and biodiversity cataloging of those organisms. To overcome this challenge, we turned to molecular identification of species collected from different islands in the Philippines. We tested whether short DNA fragments from lumun-lumun specimens collected in the last 10 years could be obtained by utilizing next-generation sequencing (NGS) with Oxford Nanopore Technologies. From a pool of 120 specimens, we obtained short DNA sequences (>450 bp) from 27 specimens. We merged our 27 barcodes with all available DNA barcode sequences from the Philippines’ Turridae included in the Barcode of Life Database (BOLD). Our phylogenetic analysis placed our 27 barcodes throughout the Turridae phylogeny. We were able to match three of our morphologically defined OTUs into valid Turridae taxa. One of our OTUs (“Lumun sp.42”) was recovered scattered across the Turridae phylogeny, matching three different genetic clusters of the hyperdiverse genus Gemmula. Therefore, our approach using NGS barcoding could be used in tandem with the current morphological classification. Finally, due to the presence of pharmacologically active compounds, which could be harnessed for various medical treatments, our results could serve as a foundation for helping identify novel pharmacological targets.