News

September 24^th, 2024 – After Allan in June, Sarah presented the DeTox pipeline at the 2nd International Congress of the European Venom Network (EUVEN) in Italy.

September 6^th, 2024 – Our paper published online in Systematic Biology in March 2024 is now available in the volume 73, and it has been chosen for the cover!

June 27^th, 2024 – Allan presented the pipeline DeTox at the JOBIM congress in Toulouse.

April 26^th, 2024 – Congratulations to Thomas, who brilliantly defended his PhD! He is now officially doctor of the Muséum national d’Histoire Naturelle!

March 30^th, 2024 - Sarah, Mélanie and Nico participated in the KANAMECO expedition in New Caledonia, together with 30+ other participants, to collect benthic organisms off Noumea. Of course, this includes many neogastropods!

March 16^th , 2024 - Allan’s first article is now published, with a new pipeline to detect toxins in transcriptomic data:

https://academic.oup.com/bib/article/25/2/bbae094/7630479

March 8^th, 2024 - By far the most complete and resolved phylogeny of the neogastropods is now published:

https://academic.oup.com/sysbio/advance-article/doi/10.1093/sysbio/syae010/7624404

March 1^st, 2024 – After the recently published phylogeny of the Turridae (see the 6^th of December, 2023 news), the corresponding new classification of the Turridae, with 11 new genera is now available: https://hal.science/hal-04442329/document.

January 15^th, 2024 – A new phylogeny of the Muricidae family has been released:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24750263.2023.2283517

December 20^th, 2023 – After Dario, Mélanie left the ERC team, but similar to Dario and Claudia, she has a new contract in the 3E team! Thanks to her and Claudia, all the neogastropod samples are now properly registered and photographed, a great achievment for the ERC.

December 13^th, 2023 – 12 years after the Chicago workshop, during which ~650 cone snail species were assessed and placed on the IUCN Red List, several specialists (including Nico and Grégoire Maniel, close collaborator of the 3E team) and IUCN facilitators are revising these assessments and assessing new species in the museum of Frankfurt, as part of SOSA ‘Senckenberg Ocean Species Alliance’.

December 6^th, 2023 – The new exon-capture based phylogeny of the Turridae, issued from Paul Zaharias’ PhD, is now published: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1055790323002695. The corresponding new classification, with several new genera, should follow shortly…

November 20^th, 2023 – Allan presented the DeTox pipeline (a new pipeline to detect putative toxins in transcriptomic data – to be published soon!) at the annual meeting of the SEQBIM.

November 17^th , 2023 – Similar to Claudia in 2022, Dario is now leaving the ERC team for a new contract in the 3E team. In almost 3 years, Dario managed to extract the DNA of c.a. 14000 specimens, to realize about 20000, leading to the production of 15000, that will necessitate months to clean and years to publish! Thanks, Dario!

November 16^th , 2023 – Sarah and Nico presented the HYPERDIVERSE project and the Monoplex and Stramonita genomes at the EVOLMAR online congress (https://www.evolmar.it/)

November 14^th , 2023 – We just published a new article in the Journal of Molecular Evolution – follow this link if you want to learn more on the toxins produced by the venom and salivary glands of Conus virgo: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00239-023-10139-8

October 4^th, 2023 – If you want to learn more about the therapeuthic potential of cone snails toxins, have a look at this video: https://leblob.fr/videos/les-venins-guerisseurs-de-ocean

October 3^rd, 2023 – Check out this new publication, listing all the deep-sea cone snail species found during 40+ years of MNHN expeditions, with the description of a new species!

September 14^th , 2023 – Nicolas was invited to present the HYPERDIVERSE project at the FORO SEM 2023, that is the anual meeting of the spanish malacological society, which was held at the University of Cadiz from 14^th to 16^th September.

July 31^st, 2023 – Sarah won a price for her talk at the ISMB/ECCB conference! Officially, she received an “honorable mention for her talk at ISMB/ECCB 2023 EvolCompGen COSI”. Congratulations!

July 23^rd to 27^th, 2023 – The ISMB/ECCB conference is the largest and most high-profile meeting of scientists working in computational biology from Europe and America. Sarah gave a talk about the whole genome duplication in neogastropods.

July 26^th, 2023 – Sarah, Maria Vittoria, and Nicolas's article about whole genome duplication in Monoplex corrugatus and Stramonita haemastoma has just been published in Molecular Biology and Evolution! Check this out: https://academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-article/doi/10.1093/molbev/msad171/7231442

June 23^rd, 2023 – After the columbellids in 2021 and the mitriforms in 2022, we organized the olivoideans workshop: the three taxonomists, Yuri Kantor from Russia, Fred Vervaet from the Nederlands and Girgio Strano from Italy identified around 2000 specimens of Olividae, Ancillariidae, benthobiidae, Bellolividae and Pseudolividae, with the help of Mélanie vand Nico. Thanks to all of them!

June 7^th, 2023 – Prof. Yuri Kantor, from the Russian Academy of Sciences, and close collaborator of the HYPERDIVERSE project, presented to the ERC team and colleagues from the associated research and collection teams a one-hour introduction to the anatomy and predator behavior of the neogastropods, followed by a live dissection of Bolinus brandaris, a Muricidae freshly bought on a market close to the MNHN! Very enjoyable and enlightening, thanks Yuri.

June 6^th, 2023 – After Nicolas in last November, Sarah presented her results on the whole genome duplication in neogastropods during the ISYEB seminar (https://isyeb.mnhn.fr/fr/agenda/sarah- farhat-post-doctorante-isyeb-9270): conserved synteny, substitution rates and hox clusters convinced the audience!

May 4^th, 2023 – Thomas took the opportunity of the “Congrès des jeunes chercheurs du Muséum” to present his results on the exon-capture-based phylogeny. At the same time, he is finalizing the preparation of his final sequencing batch – results should be available during the summer!

March 27^th, 2023 – Today was the ISYEB’s “Journée des doctorants”. Thomas and Allan presented their results on the exon-capture-based phylogeny of the neogastropods and on the toxin detection pipeline (DeTox), respectively, in front of members of the ISYEB – a good rehearsal for future congresses!

March 17^th, 2023 – One of the goals within the framework of the ERC project was to study 40000 specimens and have them registered in the MNHN “DNA” collection. Done! To be exact, we now host 41080 specimens of neogastropods and tonnoideans. Most of them have been verified by Claudia and Mélanie, and 32000 have been photographed.

December 1^st, 2022 – Melanie is back on the ERC team! She’ll be replacing Claudia to finish consolidating and digitizing the neogastropod shell collection. Still a few thousand pictures to take, and a couple of families to check…

November 15^th, 2022 – Nicolas presented the first two years of the ERC project during the ISYEB seminar (https://isyeb.mnhn.fr/fr/agenda/nicolas-puillandre-de-lisyeb-8741): sampling, databasing, integrative taxonomy, phylogeny, transcriptomics and genomics were on the menu. This served as a great introduction to future seminars from Thomas, Sarah and Allan coming later this year.

October 7^th, 2022 – After 6 months, the hyperdiverse platform is quite a success! 20 taxonomists are actively identifying our neogastropod vouchers, and so far, they have identified 4,000+ specimens, for a total of 7,000+ proposed identifications. It’s a long road toward the almost 40,000 specimens of neogastropod in the MNHN database, but we are on our way!

October 3^rd, 2022 – After a (very) successful Master 2 training program, Allan is now starting his PhD with the ERC team. He will be analysing the many transcriptomes that are already available and those that will be produced over the next year. It’s a great way to test the bioinformatic pipeline he designed during his Master 2 program. Welcome back!

September 30^th, 2022 – After two years of hard work sorting, inventorying, verifying labels, imaging, tissue-clipping, etc… several thousands (tens of thousands!) of neogastropod vouchers for the ERC project, Claudia is now leaving the ERC team. Well, she is not going very far: she found a new position in the 3E team (who hosts the ERC team)! Congratulations, Claudia, and thanks for all your work!

September 27^th, 2022 – The fieldtrip in Noumea was a success! Five species have been sampled for both genomic and proteomic studies, with a total of c.a. 500 tissue-samples. Our deepest thanks to the divers (Valentin Dutertre, Nicolas Charpin et Serge Rolland), the Lagons Aquarium in Noumea (who hosted our mini-workshop), Maria Vittoria Modica, who dissected all the samples, and for help with logistics (Sébastien Faninoz and Claire Bonneville) Ready for sequencing!

September 5^th, 2022 – Valentin Dutertre, Nicolas Charpin and Serge Rolland (from left to right) are currently diving in New Caledonia, around Noumea, to collect samples for the ERC project. On the menu: Conus striatus, Conus magus, Oliva amethystina and one species of Cancellariidae (to be identified). Over the next few days, they will also be night diving to collect marginellids, which suck the blood of parrot fish at night. Good luck!

August 29^th, 2022 – Claudia and Melanie have made great progress in curating the neogastropod collection. In just under two years they have processed over 32500 specimens and posted 9150 new images to the database. Most of the existing collection will likely be inventoried by the end of the year. We look forward to processing all new arrivals!

August 1^st – 5^th, 2022 – The WCM 2022 was also the opportunity for Sarah to present her results. Using the two genomes obtained during the ERC project, she demonstrated that these genomes experienced a whole genome duplication, and proposed the hypothesis that this event may have triggered the apparition of toxin-coding genes and favored the diversification of the neogastropods.

August 1^st – 5^th, 2022 – During the WCM 2022, Thomas presented the pipeline he developed to identify conserved exons to reconstruct the neogastropod phylogeny. His poster also included preliminary results, with a phylogeny of Conoidea, Mitroidea and Buccinoidea including c.a. 380 taxa. In the picture, he is detailing his results to Maria Vittoria Modica.

August 1^st – 5^th, 2022 – Sarah, Thomas and Nico participated and presented their results at the World Congress of Malacology (WCM) in Munich. Sarah’s talk and Thomas’ posters will be detailed in other news; Nico presented a poster on the neogastropod sampling strategy for the ERC. Several partners of the ERC project also presented results: Alexander Fedosov presented his phylogeny of neogastropods, Maria Vittoria presented her work on the hematophagous neogastropod Cumia reticulata and Yuri Kantor presented a summary of Philippe Bouchet’s work on neogastropods, as part of the symposium organized in Philippe’s honor, for his retirement.

July 8^th, 2022 – This week we organized the mitriform workshop: 7 taxonomists from the US, Australia, Italy, Russia, the Netherlands and Taiwan identified almost 4,000 samples of Mitridae, Costellariidae, Charitodoronidae, Volutomitridae and Ptychatractidae. Dozens of new species were revealed, enough work for several years to come… Our sincerest thanks to Aart Dekker, Alexander Fedosov, Sandro Gori, Shih I Huang, Max Marrow, Gary Rosenberg, Richard Salisbury, with the help of Claudia, Tanya and Philippe!

June 29^th 2022 – Thomas just published his first article as part of his PhD! This is nothing less than the most complete phylogeny of the Neogastropoda published so far, based on mitogenomes. You can learn more here:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/zsc.12552

May 14^th 2022 – Nicolas Puillandre and Philippe Bouchet organized a meeting with amateur malacologists from Germany, Switzerland, Malta and Italy, held at La Sapienza University in Rome. We invited them to sort the huge collection of turrids, making it available for integrative taxonomy. Most of them answered yes! From left to right: Giulia Fassio, Maria Vittoria Modica, Philippe Bouchet, Giacomo Chiappa, Luigi Romani, Emanuel Tardy, Italo Nofroni, Nicolas Puillandre, Roberto Ardovini, Peter Stahlschmidt (top), Andrea Napo, Marco Oliverio (Photographer: Daniele Pellegrini; departed before the picture: Walter Renda, Carlo Smriglio).

April 25^th 2022 – We are proud to announce the official launch of the Hyperdiverse Platform!
Accessible through the project website (www.hyperdiverseproject.com/specimens-single-page), this platform allows taxonomists, whether amateur or professional, to propose identifications for all the specimens that will be studied during the project. These identifications will be uploaded to the MNHN collection database and will serve as a basis for the integrative taxonomy and phylogeny studied performed during the ERC project.

March 10^th 2022 - The Buccinoidea was one of the last superfamilies of neogastropods that needed to be revised using molecular data – this is now complete! If you want to learn more about this and check out the 5 new families and 1 new subfamily, follow this link: https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/article-abstract/194/3/789/6323346

March 1^st 2022 - We now welcome Allan Ringeval, a 2^nd year Master’s student from the Université de Lille. He will join our team for a 6-month training session. Allan will be in charge of refining our toxin detection pipeline for neogastropod transcriptomes in order to increase our capacity to detect novel toxins and compare toxin diversity among species with greater precision. Welcome to the team!

December 9^th 2021 - The past 3 weeks were devoted to processing the mollusc material collected during the 2018 and 2019 shore-based expeditions in Koumac, New Caledonia, with Nicolas Puillandre, Claudia Ratti, Barbara Buge, Elisa Nocella, Béatrice Quinet, Maria Vittoria Modica and Mélanie Van Weddingen (from left to right). More than 8,000 shells were dried, packed, sorted by family and by MNHN number, and then databased. This includes 2,700 neogastropods, that are currently being sequenced by Dario, adding to the 25,000 specimens of neogastropods already databased and analysed in the framework of the ERC.

November 5^th 2021 - Today was the last day of the Columbellidae workshop, the first taxonomic workshop organized within the framework of the ERC. More than 2200 specimens were identified and 250 were tissue-clipped and are ready for sequencing. A few dozen potential new species were revealed – we have our work cut out for us for the next few years! Thank you to Marta, Ellen, Kevin, Philippe and Claudia!

November 2^nd 2021 - Sarah is now part of the ERC team and she will take on the assembly and annotation of the genomes. Two genomes are already available and ready to be processed, and two others will be sequenced in the following weeks. Good luck and welcome!

October 1^st 2021 - Mélanie is joining our team to help Claudia in photographying the thousands of neogastropod samples that are being studied in the framework of the project. Welcome!

September 29^th 2021 - DNA sequencing revealed 6 new species of Cochlespiridae (Conoidea), described here: https://europeanjournaloftaxonomy.eu/index.php/ejt/article/view/1509/5111

July 7^th 2021 - We analysed the transcriptomes of two divergent lineages of cone snails (including Pygmaeconus, illustrated here, 5mm only!) with similarity- and structure-based approaches and discovered novel toxins! Check it here: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2021.1017

July 5^th 2021 - Carmen Tucci, an Erasmus+ student from the University of Trieste, is joining the HYPERDERVE TEAM for 3 months. She will work on the transcriptomes of several glands of a cone snail, Conus virgo. Welcome!

May 25^th 2021 - Nico and Maria-Vittoria are currently in the field collecting samples for the genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic analyses. So far, we found Monoplex corrugatus and Stramonita haemastoma; their genomes were recently sequenced but replicates were needed for the transcriptomic and proteomic analyses. We are also targeting other species, such as Columbella rustica (very common) and Pusia ebenus, and hope to have luck again in the next few days!

March 29^th 2021 - Despite the lockdown and pending new sanitary restrictions, things are progressing! Claudia announces that she has processed 8400 specimens and added 3700 new photographs to the database. Meanwhile, Dario has tissue-clipped 2500 samples, ready to be sequenced as soon as the lab re-opens. The first 2 genomes of the project have been sequenced, and Alessandro and Thomas are analysing them as we speak - the preliminary assemblies look very promising! And finally, Tanya has submitted the first Data Management Plan to the ERC. More coming soon!

March 2^nd 2021 - It is Alessandro's turn to join the HYPERDIVERSE team! His first work will be to assemble the first genomes - the data are arriving! Good luck and welcome!

January 5^th 2021 - Thomas Lemarcis joins the team! He is starting his PhD on the phylogeny of neogastropod, with a special emphasis on Raphitomidae and the sequencing of old-collection samples. Let's hope that the covid situation will improve soon to start the lab work asap!

January 5^th 2021 - In 3 months, Claudia already sorted and updated the database for more than 2,500 samples of neogastropods! Only a few tens of thousands to go ;)

November 4^th 2020 Welcome to Dario (Research ingeneer)! Unfortunately, his arrival in the project coincide with the second lockdown in France... Consequently, the lab work will have to wait a little bit - in the meantime, we play in silico with the available COI sequences!

October 26^th 2020 Last week was the opportunity for Nico and Maria Vittoria to collect fresh material for the ERC, as part of the "La Planète Revisitée" expedition in Corsica. On the picture, Maria Vittoria is dissecting a sample of Monoplex (Cymatiidae, Tonnoidea) to preserve it in liquid nitrogen for genomic and transcriptomic sequencing. You can follow the expedition here: laplaneterevisitee-corse.mnhn.fr

October 7^th 2020: Today was organized the kick-off meeting of the project! Due to the sanitary crisis, a limited number of persons enjoyed a short presentation of the project, both on the scientific and administrative sides, followed by a little drink.

October 1^st 2020: Welcome to Tanya (Project Manager) and Claudia (Collection Manager), who join Nicolas Puillandre to constitute the ERC HYPERDIVERSE team V1.0! The work thus officially started with the first administrative tasks (the first one being the organization of the kick-off meeting) and the curation of the samples of the Tonnoidea superfamily.

October 1^st 2020: Official starting date of the HYPERDIVERSE project! In spite of the difficult sanitary conditions, the HYPERDIVERSE project has officially started! Let’s hope that these 5 upcoming years will be fruitful, both for the project in itself, with significant progress toward a better understanding of the evolution of the neogastropods, and for the members of the project in terms of personal achievements!