Spencer Greenwood is the Lobster Science Centre’s CSI guy.

His science—molecular biology, parasitology, lobster pathogens, and host-pathogen interactions—deals with stuff you can’t see even with a simple microscope. Like genes. But the aim is simple, even if the science isn’t.

“We are developing a library of genes that are expressed from parasites infecting lobster.” The creation of a library or database of expressed genes has provided clues into how the parasite may actually cause
disease in lobsters. They find genes that may code for proteins involved in attachment of the parasite to the lobster, how it invades the tissue, and possibly how it eventually kills the lobster.

“We want to see genes that the parasite ‘turns on’ during infection. We thought it might be using an enzyme to actually penetrate the carapace, but work we’ve done says no. That makes it an opportunistic pathogen—it needs a point of entry into the lobster. Sometimes you need science to build on the evidence of common sense.”

The Atlantic Lobster Moult and Quality project, recently funded by the Atlantic Innovation Fund, has allowed the AVCLSC to begin to focus on issues surrounding the lobster’s life cycle. Understanding the moult cycle of lobsters is critical to the health and quality of harvested lobsters.

Greenwood, in collaboration with colleague Dr. David Towle at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory in Maine, is beginning to accumulate a database of genes expressed at different stages of the lobster’s life cycle. The overall goal of the research is to discover genetic markers for specific aspects of the life cycle. The hope is that they will be able to determine when a lobster is about to enter the moult cycle or become reproductively active. The research will look at all life stages from larval to adult lobsters.

Greenwood thinks scientists have to look at juvenile lobsters. “If we can take little lobsters and determine their moult stage as they go through their life cycle, then we will be able to see which genes are turned on and when. There are going to be some genes that are unique to each of those stages and they will be markers for the stages. We will also get information about stress and immune response.” Information not only about the moult cycle but also the genes expressed during stress and immune response are a huge benefit, and connect to Greenwood’s previous work on lobster diseases. Now they will have information from both sides of the equation: the host and the pathogen