Artemia

Genetics, genomics and transcriptomics

Artemia comprises sexually reproducing, diploid species and several obligateparthenogeneticArtemia populations consisting of different clones and ploidies (2n->5n). Several genetic maps have been published for Artemia. The past years, different transcriptomic studies have been performed to elucidate biological responses in Artemia, such as its response to salt stress, toxins, infection and diapause termination. These studies also led to various fully assembled Artemiatranscriptomes. Recently, the Artemiagenome was assembled and annotated, revealing a genome containing an unequaled 58% of repeats, genes with unusually long introns and adaptations unique to the extremophilic nature of Artemia in high salt and low oxygen environments. These adaptations include a unique energy-intensive endocytosis-based salt excretion strategy resembling salt excretion strategies of plants, as well as several survival strategies for extreme environments it has in common with the extremophilic tardigrade.