The first ASTI PhD student to defend her thesis

Chiara Ciccone will defend her thesis : "Molecular adaptations to diving-induced hypoxia. Diurnal variations in cellular and mitochondrial hypoxia tolerance in the hooded seal (Cystophora cristata)" on Tuesday 26th November. 

You can stream the defense here.

PhD candidate Vebjørn Melum will represent UiT in the national final of the forsker grand prix.

The forsker grand prix is a competition to bring research to the public. PhD students compete in regional finals for the chance to represent their University in the national final. 

Each participant prepares two 4 minute presentations on their research project. Nine candidates competed in the UiT regional final, and, ASTI PhD candidate Vebjørn Melum won.  Vebjørn is researching "how hamsters put their bodies on low power to survive the winter. Golden hamsters hibernate. Siberian dwarf hamsters delay puberty and grow slowly....[and] how a sensor cells in the brain called tanycytes makes this possible".  Vebjørn gave two very entertaining accounts of his research that can be viewed here (in Norwegian).  

ASTI wishes Vebjørn the best of luck for the national final and encourages everyone to sign up to watch.

Invited talk at the Nordic Developmental Biology Societies & Michael Sars Symposium Joint Meeting

Shona Wood was invited to give a talk on maternal photoperiodic programming to a collection of international developmental biologists at the Michael Sars centre. The talk was well received and discussions with scientists working on very different aspects was very stimulating. 

ASTI researchers identify cells in the brain that activate during the arousal from hibernation.

Just published in Journal of experimental biology Fredrik Markussen, Fernando Cázarez-Márquez, Vebjørn Melum, David Hazlerigg and Shona Wood have identifies metabolically sensitive cells in the brain that are activated on arousal from hibernation. The original scientific article, a popular science article and an interview with the early career reseacher and first author, Fredrik, describes the study and the challenges of working with hibernators.

Congratulations to ASTI researchers on a job well done. And thanks to the ERC consolidator grant HiTime awarded to Shona Wood for funding this research.

Our work on hooded seals has been highlighted in a popular science article and a early career spotlight

We have found a daily rhtyhm in the energy use of mitochondria in Hooded seals that may relate to their diving behaviour. The original scientific article and a popular science article are featured in the Journal of experimental Biology. Also the first author and PhD candiate, Chiara Ciccone was interviewed about the her research.

Come and join us at ASTI! PhD available in salmonid biology.

The PhD project will focus on the process of smoltification in farmed Atlantic salmon. Smoltification is the process of transformation from a freshwater resident juvenile fish to a migratory form capable of surviving and growing in seawater. Successful completion of this process is a key aspect of Atlantic salmon farming, crucial for animal welfare and economic productivity. The PhD project is linked to a four year NFR funded project "Hubsmolt" which will explore the importance of genetics for completion of smoltification in an aquaculture setting, focusing on newly identified genetic variants that potentially enhance this process. The PhD project will focus on the impact of genetic variation on immunological development and anti-viral performance, and on the underlying physiological mechanisms.

To apply and for detial go to Jobbnorge.

A photo of a Svalbard reindeer taken by ASTIs own Shona Wood is featured on the cover of JEB to accompany an ASTI review on clock in the Arctic

The cover image can be seen here listed as the December issue. The photo shows a female Svalbard reindeer (Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus) in Adventdalen, Svalbard. The extreme light environment results in both seasonal and daily challenges. This accompanies our review (JEB246308) which explores the impact of extreme cycles of solar illumination on the biological clocks of birds and mammals that spend all or part of their lives in the polar regions, such as the Svalbard reindeer. 

Shona Wood recently did a posdcast on hibernation and her recent ERC consolidator award to investigate the role of tanycytes in hibernation

You can listen here.

ERC funded hibernation project needs a lab/animal techncian

The project focuses on the extreme physiological adaptation of Hibernation. Hibernation is a physiological and behavioural adaptation that permits survival during periods of reduced food availability and extreme environmental temperatures in several mammalian species. This project aims to understand how the brain controls hibernation. The golden hamster is the model species for our hibernation studies. The successful candidate will provide technical support to the group by assisting in animal care and surgeries. The role will also include lab work such as cell culture, tissue sectioning, immunohistochemistry, RNA and DNA preparation and microscopy.

The candidate must be willing to work with animals and perform lab tasks. The candidate also has to be willing to occasionally work outside normal working hours. 

To be eligible for the position, you must either be: 

1) Qualified at Master's level in biology, preferably with a physiology or molecular biology specialisation, or 

2) have completed a Bachelor in Dyrepleiere with relevant experience.

Apply here

ASTI director David has been awarded 12 million NOK from the Norwegian research Council's to lead a major collaborative project

The project was awarded by the Norwegian research council under the thematic call "Hav" (ocean). ASTI director David Hazlerigg will lead the project in collaboration with NMBU, the University of Aberdeen, MOWI and NOFIMA. ASTI researcher Alex West is also a project partner and along with UiT researcher Eva-Stina Edholm. The aim is to characterise a novel genetic locus defining seawater consequences of freshwater rearing conditions in Atlantic salmon.  

ASTI researcher Shona Wood has been awarded 2.2 million euros for hibernation research.

The prestigious ERC consolidator was awarded to Shona this Spring and with the grant agreement now in place the project will start in September 2023. This will be a 5-year project on the brain mechanisms driving hibernation. This success was made possible by the support of the University through the Arctic seasonal timekeeping initiative and the support of Trond Mohn through the TFS starter grant awarded to Shona. 

David Hazlerigg won the faculty research prize 2022

The prize was awarded for efforts in building the Arctic chronobiology research group and the Arctic seasonal timekeeping initiative (ASTI). David has been in Tromsø since 2013 and has made a great contribution to the research environment and established UiT as a world leader in seasonal timing.

Trond Mohn made a generous gift to establish the Tromsø forskningsstiftelse (TFS), a foundation to support basic research. Both David Hazlerigg and Shona Wood have been supported by the TFS and want to express their thanks to the foundation board and Trond Mohn.

On the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the TFS a celebration was held in honour of Trond Mohn and the 30 projects financed by the fund. David Hazlerigg was awarded 9.4 MNOK "topp forsk" grant in 2016 to research the evolution of vertebrate seasonal clock work. In 2017 Shona Wood was recruited to UiT through the TFS starter grant program to establish a group working on seasonal timekeeping and hibernation (award value 12 MNOK). Without the support of the TFS, Wood and Hazlerigg would have not had the research capacity to compete for the aurora centre award which established the Arctic seasonal timekeeping initiative.

Last week ASTI PhD candidate Vebjørn Jacobsen Melum helped junior high-school students to explore the brain.

With the use of ASTIs ongoing hibernation research, Vebjørn explained what we know and do not know about the brain and how it hibernates. The students navigated their way through the brain by studying brain sections in the microscope and orientated themselves with the use of 3D-brain models (1) and an interactive brain atlas (2). Overall, the session sparked curiosity and marvel about the complexity of our brain. The long-standing mystery of how hibernating animals so tightly control their body temperature at various set points remains unresolved.

1 – https://www.brainfacts.org/3d-brain#intro=false&focus=Brain&zoom=false

2 - https://scalablebrainatlas.incf.org/

Come and work with us at ASTI!

 

The PhD project will focus on the process of smoltification in farmed Atlantic salmon. Smoltification is the process of transformation from a freshwater resident juvenile fish to a migratory form capable of surviving and growing in seawater. Successful completion of this process is a key aspect of Atlantic salmon farming, crucial for animal welfare and economic productivity. The PhD project is linked to a four year NFR funded project "Hubsmolt" which will explore the importance of genetics for completion of smoltification in an aquaculture setting, focusing on newly identified genetic variants that potentially enhance this process. The PhD project will focus on the impact of genetic variation on immunological development and anti-viral performance, and on the underlying physiological mechanisms.

To apply and see more information please go through Jobbnorge 

ASTI are happy to announce the birth of 6 reindeer calves

We maintain a herd of Norwegian reindeer to research the physiological adaptations to the arctic in this species. We are thrilled to announce that we have 6 new additions to the herd and wish to share some pictures of our newborns enjoying their snowy outdoor enclosure.

ASTI members Lars Folkow, Chiara Ciccone and Shona Wood have recently returned from the east coast of Greenland, referred to the West ice (Vestisen) in Norway. The aim was to conduct multiple research projects in the ice but also run a research-led teaching cruise for UiT BIO-2310 students. ASTI aimed to contribute to the specific ASTI research project Clocks, hypoxia and metabolism.

Diving mammals have evolved several adaptations that enable them to cope with the limited availability of oxygen (hypoxia). Among pinnipeds, the hooded seal (Cystophora cristata) has remarkable diving capacities. A goal of ASTI is to develop methodologies to study hypoxia tolerance in a physiologically relevant model but while minimising the use of animals while maximising the quality of data.

The hooded seal is known for its remarkable diving capacities: dives as long as 1 hour and as deep as 1600 m have been recorded (Folkow and Blix, 1999; Andersen et al., 2013; Vacquie-Garcia et al., 2017). Because of these abilities, the hooded seal has been considered an ideal research model in both diving and hypoxia-tolerance physiology in a wide number of studies (Folkow et al., 2008; Mitz et al., 2009; Vázquez-Medina et al., 2011; Fabrizius et al., 2016; Geiseler, Larson and Folkow, 2016; Hoff et al., 2016, 2017; Geßner et al., 2020). However, access to these animals is limited, they are only accessible in the breeding season (March) located within the pack ice off Jan Mayen/east coast of Greenland, Davis Strait and the coast of Labrador.

PhD student Chiara Ciccone and MSc student Fayiri Kante have been developing techniques to grow cells from these animals with the hope of making 100’s of experiments possible from one animal. We are happy to report that our recent trip was very successful, and we have many cells happily dividing in dishes ready for experiments over the next year into hypoxia and the interactions with the circadian clock in a highly hypoxia tolerant mammal.

We would like to thank the Helmer Hanssen crew and Captain for a successful research trip and the BIO-2310 UiT students for a fun research-based teaching opportunity. Final thanks go to the two polar bears that made a guest appearance on the ice.

 Polar bears in Vestisen Foto: Shona Wood

References

Andersen, J. M. et al. (2013) ‘Investigating annual diving behaviour by hooded seals (cystophora cristata) within the northwest atlantic ocean’, PLoS ONE, 8(11). doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0080438.

Fabrizius, A. et al. (2016) ‘When the brain goes diving: Transcriptome analysis reveals a reduced aerobic energy metabolism and increased stress proteins in the seal brain’, BMC Genomics, 17(1). doi: 10.1186/s12864-016-2892-y.

Folkow, L. P. et al. (2008) ‘Remarkable neuronal hypoxia tolerance in the deep-diving adult hooded seal (Cystophora cristata)’, Neuroscience Letters, 446(2–3), pp. 147–150. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2008.09.040.

Folkow, L. P. and Blix, A. S. (1999) ‘Diving behaviour of hooded seals (Cystophora cristata) in the Greenland and Norwegian seas’, Polar Biology, 22(1), pp. 61–74. doi: 10.1007/BF02329206.

Geiseler, S. J., Larson, J. and Folkow, L. P. (2016) ‘Synaptic transmission despite severe hypoxia in hippocampal slices of the deep-diving hooded seal’, Neuroscience, 334, pp. 39–46. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2016.07.034.

Geßner, C. et al. (2020) ‘Cell Culture Experiments Reveal that High S100B and Clusterin Levels may Convey Hypoxia-tolerance to the Hooded Seal (Cystophora cristata) Brain’, Neuroscience, 451(October), pp. 226–239. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2020.09.039.

Hoff, M. L. M. et al. (2016) ‘An atypical distribution of lactate dehydrogenase isoenzymes in the hooded seal (Cystophora cristata) brain may reflect a biochemical adaptation to diving’, Journal of Comparative Physiology B: Biochemical, Systemic, and Environmental Physiology, 186(3), pp. 373–386. doi: 10.1007/s00360-015-0956-y.

Hoff, M. L. M. et al. (2017) ‘Transcriptome analysis identifies key metabolic changes in the hooded seal (Cystophora cristata) brain in response to hypoxia and reoxygenation’, PLoS ONE, 12(1), pp. 1–21. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0169366.

Mitz, S. A. et al. (2009) ‘When the brain goes diving: glial oxidative metabolism may confer hypoxia tolerance to the seal brain’, Neuroscience, 163(2), pp. 552–560. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2009.06.058.

Vacquie-Garcia, J. et al. (2017) ‘Hooded seal Cystophora cristata foraging areas in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean—Investigated using three complementary methods’, PLOS ONE. Edited by Y. Ropert-Coudert, 12(12), p. e0187889. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0187889.

Vázquez-Medina, J. P. et al. (2011) ‘Maturation increases superoxide radical production without increasing oxidative damage in the skeletal muscle of hooded seals (Cystophora cristata)’, Canadian Journal of Zoology, 89(3), pp. 206–212. doi: 10.1139/Z10-107.

This Monday (04.04.2022), we proudly transferred our first Svalbard ptarmigans into the newly finished aviary.

 Now, our birds have not only more space to pursue their ptarmigan ambitions but are also matched with their partners for the upcoming breeding season. Talking of love birds. While some were stunned by their new surroundings, others wasted no time to vocalise their arrival and showing the new furniture who is boss.

We are all looking forward to the new and exciting research possibilities.   

In an exciting development today, senior members of the ASTI research group in Tromsø re-discovered the Sun. This resolves a perplexing puzzle that has been dogging Arctic researchers since mid-November: Why isn´t it getting light anymore?

 

Over a period of weeks, painstaking research appeared to be leading nowhere, with attempts to find our favourite celestial body becoming ever more desperate. Indeed Prof Jørgen Berge, Dean of Biosciences (and some other stuff) in Tromsø, who was definitely not involved in this study, hypothesised that the most likely explanation was that the Sun had disappeared beneath the sea – explaining the maintained circadian entrainment of plankton even in December.

Rejecting this hypothesis, ASTI researchers Wood and Hazlerigg bravely set out on mission to find the Sun, armed only with a large thermos of sweet tea. To their surprise, slightly before midday today, they spotted their quarry in a southerly direction, just above the horizon. In a further development they also found their shadows, refuting earlier suspicions that they had become vampires.

“Imagine our amazement, it was big and orange and made us feel happy” said Dr Wood, who led the study.

“Re-discovering the Sun, is perhaps the most important thing for life in the Arctic” said Professor Hazlerigg, who has been unusually grumpy these last two months.

“If they had only bothered to consult the published literature, they would have realised that this happens every year”, said Professor Arnoldus Blix, who was very definitely not involved in the study, but knows more than most about the old literature.

Nevertheless, this is a great discovery for the residents of Tromsø with wide-reaching significance for mental health, vitamin D deficiency, obesity, chrono-disruption and world peace.

ASTI extends its condolences to the residents of Svalbard who are yet to re-discover the sun.  Plans to send Professor Hazlerigg to the high Arctic archipelago to help with efforts to find the sun are in process with the Governor of Svalbard.

Happy Soldagen from ASTI

A 4 year independent research fellow position available within ASTI - with further prospects for permanent appointment.

The appointee will be expected to develop their own main line of research to complement and augment parallel research programmes within ASTI, and to align with one or more of the overarching thematic headings: Core seasonal timer mechanisms and outputs; Comparative seasonal chronobiology; One seasonal health.

The appointee will become an integral member of the Arctic Chronobiology and Physiology research group, which is based on the UiT Brevika campus and leads the ASTI programme. This is a young and growing research grouping with a strong collective ethos of interdisciplinarity and collaboration, which will offer excellent opportunities to co-develop collaborative projects under the ASTI umbrella. 

Membership of this group will provide excellent further training and career development opportunities, in both research and pedagogical aspects, enabling the appointee to compete for future long-term career positions.

For further information regarding this position, please contact Professor David G. Hazlerigg, david.hazlerigg@uit.no phone +47 77 64 48 71 and look at the full description of the position here:

https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/208025/researcher-within-the-arctic-seasonal-timekeeping-initiative

Do Svalbard ptarmigan need a circadian clock in a rather arrhythmic environment such as the High Arctic? During the polar day and polar night, which makes up 2/3 of their seasonal life, they are active around the clock. This suggests a lack of circadian control over behaviour. However, in a recent study from our ACP-research group we showed that the circadian clock is still an integral part of seasonal timekeeping.

While circadian based seasonal timing is widely accepted in the field of chronobiology, our study is the first to show that the same mechanism operates in permanent residents of the High Arctic.

Hence, Svalbard ptarmigan display a chronobiological adaptation perfectly suiting their habitat. They can ignore their circadian clock in terms of behaviour but are still able to utilize it in order to time seasonal events such as reproduction.

The study is published in Current Biology and is featured in Nature News.

The high impact of the article clearly shows that the world craves more research on Svalbard ptarmigan. Luckily, the ACP-research group combined with the newly founded Arctic Seasonal Timekeeping Initiative (ASTI) is ready to provide.

We are happy to announce that the new Hibernation research facility is now operational at UiT. The Tromsø forskningsstiftelse (TFS ) award to Dr. Shona Wood and the UiT supported  Arctic Seasonal Timekeeping Initiative (ASTI) have made it possible to establish the first hibernation research facility in Norway.

Hibernation is a physiological and behavioural adaptation that permits survival during periods of reduced food availability and extreme environmental temperatures in several mammalian species. This is achieved through cycles of metabolic depression and reduced body temperature (torpor) and rewarming (arousal).

From an human perspective, the ability of hibernating animals to arouse to a normal body temperature state after extended periods of cooling to temperatures as low as 0 degrees is nothing short of miraculous. We aim to focus on the role of the brain in this process, and the issue of how it maintains the ability to control temperature within safe limits during torpor, and then subsequently drives and co-ordinates rewarming of the organism. This undertaking addresses a basic biological mystery with great applied importance: how hibernators allow their brains to cool and become hypoxic and are then able to re-warm them returning to a healthy euthermic state, this is of clear biomedical relevance in terms of tissue/organ cryopreservation and transplantation, surgery and recovery from hypothermia.

Deep thanks and acknowledment go to PhD students Vebjørn Melum and Fredrik Markussen in making this possible. More information on the facility and project aims can be found on the ASTI website: https://uit.no/research/asti/project?pid=717950

 Photo credit: Fredrik Markussen

An exciting week for the members of ASTI with two PhD thesis successfully defended.

Congratulations to Dr. Daniel Appenroth who successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Circadian-based processes in the high Arctic: activity, thermoregulation and photoperiodism in the Svalbard ptarmigan (Lagopus muta hyperborea)" on the 15th April 2021.

You can read Daniel's thesis and the three published papers here. Daniel was supervised by the ASTI centre director Prof. David Hazlerigg and ASTI researcher Dr. Alex West, along with Dr. Gabi Wagner. The evaluation committee consisted of Professor Brian Follett (1. opponent) and Dr. Gisela Helfer (2. opponent), with ASTI's Professor Lars Folkow as the internal member and leader of the committee.

 

 

Congratulations to Dr. Marianne Iversen who successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled "Photoperiodic history-dependent preadaptation of the smolting gill" on the 16th April.

You can read Marianne's thesis and three published papers here. Marianne was supervised by Prof. David Hazlerigg and Prof. Even Jørgensen. The evaluation committee consisted of Associate Professor Steffen Madsen, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark (1. opponent) and Professor Jon Vidar Helvik, University of Bergen (2. opponent), with Dr. Eva-Stina Edholm, an ASTI collaborator in the Norwegian College of Fishery Science as internal member and leader of the committee).

 

An excellent two days of science representing all the hard work relating to seasonal timing we do here at ASTI. Hopefully many more successful defences and papers to come!