title: Serotonin Mediates Maternal Effects and Directs Developmental and Behavioral Changes in the Progeny of Snails.
abstract: Many organisms survive in constantly changing environments, including cycling seasons. Developing embryos show remarkable instant adaptations to the variable environmental challenges they encounter during their adult life, despite having no direct contact with the changing environment until after birth or hatching. The mechanisms by which such non-genetic information is transferred to the developing embryos are largely unknown. Here, we address this question by using a freshwater pond snail (Lymnaea stagnalis) as a model system. This snail normally lives in a seasonal climate, and the seasons define its locomotion, feeding, and reproductive behavior. We discovered that the serotonergic system plays a crucial role in transmitting a non-genetic instructive signal from mother to progeny. This maternal serotonin-based signal functions in embryos during a short time window at exclusively early pre-neural developmental stages and modulates the dynamics of embryonic and juvenile growth, feeding behavior, and locomotion.
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Neurocytology, Brain Research Branch, Scientific Center of Neurology, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, 105064 Moscow, Russia; Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet, 17177 Solna, Sweden.
authors.forename: Evgeny
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ivashkin
authors.affiliation: Institute of Developmental Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 119334 Moscow, Russia.
authors.forename: Marina Yu
authors.initials: MY
authors.lastname: Khabarova
authors.affiliation: Institute of Developmental Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 119334 Moscow, Russia.
authors.forename: Victoria
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Melnikova
authors.affiliation: Institute of Developmental Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 119334 Moscow, Russia.
authors.forename: Leonid P
authors.initials: LP
authors.lastname: Nezlin
authors.affiliation: Institute of Developmental Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 119334 Moscow, Russia.
authors.forename: Olga
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Kharchenko
authors.affiliation: Institute of Developmental Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 119334 Moscow, Russia. Electronic address: elena.voronezhskaya@idbras.ru.
authors.forename: Elena E
authors.initials: EE
authors.lastname: Voronezhskaya
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet, 17177 Solna, Sweden; Department of Molecular Neurosciences, Center of Brain Research, Medical University of Vienna, 1090 Vienna, Austria. Electronic address: igor.adameyko@ki.se.
authors.forename: Igor
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Adameyko
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D001757:Blastomeres / Q000378:metabolism*; D004777:Environment; D012701:Serotonin / Q000378:metabolism*; D015398:Signal Transduction; D012908:Snails
chemical_list: D012701:Serotonin