Roboticists, ocean engineers, bioengineers, and marine and molecular biologists from URI\u2019s Department of Ocean Engineering; the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay, Maine; the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University; Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in California; PA Consulting, a worldwide firm that focuses on innovation; and the Department of Natural Sciences at Baruch College, City University of New York, made up the team. The paper represents five years of research.<\/p>\n Revolutionary advancements in underwater imaging, robotics, and genomic sequencing have reshaped marine exploration, the study reads. The research shows that within minutes of an encounter with a deep-sea animal, it is possible to capture detailed measurements and motion of the animal, obtain an entire genome, and generate a comprehensive list of genes being expressed that point to their physiological status in the deep ocean. The result of this rich digital data is a \u2018cybertype\u2019 of a single animal, rather than a physical \u2018holotype\u2019 that is traditionally found in museum collections.<\/p>\n \u201cCurrently, if researchers want to describe what they believe is a new species, they face an arduous process,\u201d Phillips said. \u201cThe way it is done now is you capture a specimen, which is very difficult because a lot of these animals are so delicate and tissue-thin, and it\u2019s likely you may not be able to collect them at all. But if you successfully collect an animal, you then preserve it in a jar. Then begins a long process of physically bringing that specimen to different collections around the world where it is compared to existing organisms. After a long time, sometimes up to 21 years, scientists may reach consensus that this is a new species. <\/p>\n \u201cAgain, these are deep-sea, thin little wisps of animals. The current workflow is not appropriate. It\u2019s a major reason why we have so many undescribed species in the ocean.\u201d<\/p>\n A rotary actuated dodecahedron (RAD-2) encapsulates a holoplanktic polychaete, Tomopteris (a marine worm). Video from remotely operated vehicle, SuBastian science camera, Schmidt Ocean Institute.<\/p><\/div> Information gained from the study\u2014and others that follow\u2014could be useful for extinction prevention studies, as it provides a wealth of information from a single specimen gained during a single encounter. The work also responds to the growing call among researchers for compassionate collection, which minimizes harm to animals by using advanced technologies to collect information. Future studies and development could allow for complete scans and inventories of life in the deep sea within a catch-and-release framework.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe vision was: How might a marine biologist work to better understand and connect to deep-sea life decades or centuries into the future?\u201d said David Gruber, Distinguished Professor of Biology at Baruch College, City University of New York, and an Explorer with National Geographic Society. \u201cThis is a demonstration on how an interdisciplinary team could work collaboratively to provide an enormous amount of new information on deep-sea life after one brief encounter. The ultimate goal is to continue down this path and refine the technology to be as minimally-invasive as possible\u2014akin to a doctor\u2019s check-up in the deep sea! This approach is becoming increasingly important with current extinction rates being 100 times higher than background extinction rates.\u201d<\/p>\n Phillips said because collecting these samples has always been hard, there are many deep-sea species that have yet to be identified. \u201cWhen you look at climate change and deep-sea mining and their potential effects, it is unsettling,\u201d Phillips said. \u201cYou realize you don\u2019t have a full baseline of species, and you may not know what you\u2019ve lost before it\u2019s too late. If you want to know what has been there before it\u2019s gone, this is a new way to do that.\u201d <\/p>\n The mission, which was funded by the Schmidt Ocean Institute and its Designing the Future <\/a>program, and conducted on its research vessel Falkor, <\/em>included two expeditions off the coast of Hawaii and San Diego in 2019 and 2021. The team collected as many as 14 preserved tissue samples a day, along with terabytes of quantitative digital imagery. Together, the study provided: <\/p>\n The lead author of the paper, John Burns, a senior research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory, conducted the genomic analysis on four animals sampled at depths of almost 4,000 feet.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we were able to achieve with these animals is remarkable,\u201d Burns said. \u201cFor me, this is best seen in the sequence data we generated for the Tomopteris <\/em>worm: We captured it while it was exploring its environment and were able to infer that it was scanning the water using two long sensory whiskers near its head for \u2018sweet\u2019 tastes: likely sugars associated with prey, and possibly for ammonia: a waste product of its typical prey.<\/p>\n \u201cWith that information, we can envision how it hunts by following chemical trails in its open water habitat,\u201d Burns said. \u201cI don\u2019t think that would have been possible without the innovative technology invented and employed by the engineers on the team that allowed complete preservation of the information from the animals within minutes of an encounter.\u201d<\/p>\n Burns said another study with Gruber looked at how capture methods affect jellyfish ribonucleic acid, known as RNA, one of the building blocks of life. That sequence of information can start to change after about 10 minutes of stressful conditions, even with gentle collection. The Designing the Future technologies overcome this by preserving the information before the animal\u2019s cells start to respond to stress, according to Burns.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe also discovered that three of the animals we captured have huge genomes: each having nearly 10 times the DNA in a cell compared to us humans!\u201d Burns said. \u201cFor the fourth, with a more modestly sized genome (about 3% the size of a human genome) we were able to use cutting edge sequencing methods to build the most cohesive and complete genome of a salp to date.\u201d<\/p>\n Harvard and URI brought to the mission a rotary-actuated folding dodecahedron (RAD-2), an innovative origami-inspired robotic encapsulation device, which collected animal tissue samples and almost instantaneously preserved that tissue at depth. <\/p>\n \u201cWe are seeing the impact of new types of marine robots for midwater and deep-sea exploration,\u201d said roboticist Robert Wood, the Harry Lewis and Marlyn McGrath Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. \u201cNot only are robots going places that are difficult or impossible for humans to reach, our devices investigate, interact with, and collect specimens using a gentle touch\u2026 or no touch at all.\u201d<\/p>\n Imaging systems from MBARI\u2019s Bioinspiration Lab that included a laser-scanning imaging device called DeepPIV <\/a>and a three-dimensional lightfield camera called EyeRIS <\/a>enabled the measurement and reconstruction of three-dimensional morphology, or body shape, of the animals in their natural environment.<\/p>\n \u201cWe cannot protect what we do not yet fully understand. Advanced imaging technologies can accelerate our efforts to document the diversity of life in the ocean. The faster we can catalog marine life, the better we can assess and track the impact of human actions like climate change and mining on ocean environments,\u201d said Kakani Katija, bioengineer and principal engineer of the Bioinspiration Lab at MBARI. <\/p>\n \u201cWe have these remotely operated vehicles out there with advanced imaging systems, which can create a three-dimensional model after only a few minutes,\u201d Phillips said. \u201cWe were able to approach a tiny jellyfish in a matter of seconds, collect high-resolution 3D images to the control room, and our team was able to tell in a matter of minutes that the tentacles were exactly 5 millimeters long. Then, we had extremely well-preserved tissue samples of the same animal within a matter of minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Innovative new research led by URI ocean engineering professor Brennan Phillips may shave years from the process of confirming the discovery of new or rare species in the deep sea. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4762,"featured_media":183188,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[1970,720,3037],"class_list":["post-183184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-brennan-phillips","tag-deep-sea","tag-robotics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4762"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183184"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":183191,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183184\/revisions\/183191"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/916\/2-2-500x333.jpg\")
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