Renata Freitas

As an evolutionary developmental biologist, I'm fascinated with sharks and with the fact that they are extant representatives of our basal gnathostome ancestral. During my PhD I had the chance to work on shark development with Martin J. Cohn (University of Florida) and I was surprised to realize that most detailed anatomical analyses on shark development were more than 100 years old. Moreover, only a few molecular studies that explored their developmental mechanisms were available. That was when I truly realized the importance to improve the experimental repertoire available for those animals in order to address evolutionary and developmental questions. We mainly explored the developmental mechanisms involved in median and paired appendage evolution, works that we published in Nature (2006) and Plos One (2007). But we also explored other aspects of their development such as the embryonic origin of their electrosensory organs (EvoDevo, 2006; Dev Genes Evol, 2004). More recently, I helped to set up a platform on shark development in Portugal (my home country) in collaboration with Filipe Castro (Portugal) and Jonathan Wilson (Canada) and we are undertaking a project on the evolution of the stomach, another characteristic that emerged at the root of divergence of gnathostomes. In this context we are able to bread sharks in our husbandry and to have regular access to embryos to perform molecular developmental studies. This has been attracting internship students with multiple interests, from purely scientific, to educational. We would like to involve international partners in our projects and to contribute to highlight the importance of sharks as model organisms. The involvement of Rui Diogo (USA) with our shark platform, as a science communicator and an outstanding vertebrate anatomist, will boost our scientific and educational purposes.

May 2016