


SMEMORY
Seagrass Epigenetic Memory
National Geographic Explorer 2022

THE PROJECT
SMEMORY aims to explore mechanisms that are behind the memorization in marine plants testing the stress-memory transmission to the next generations in a relative fast-growing seagrass species (i.e. Cymodocea nodosa). Focus will be on small changes occurring at the DNA level, where all the information of an organism resides, that modulate the way it is decoded without modifying its structure (epigenetic variants). SMEMORY is innovative, explorative and descriptive of a fundamental process that until recently was described only for animals and terrestrial plants, which is the memory. Now, building on what SMEMORY found, the work is continuing with the RESIST project on Posidonia oceanica, where they’re exploring priming techniques and how memory works in Posidonia oceanica seedlings.

Underwater plants
Seagrasses
Imagine a forest with different shapes of leaves. Now imagine the same forest but immersed in marine waters. These are seagrasses.
Mesocosm Experiment
Sophisticated systems to simulate the effect of the stress factor of interest for analyzing stress responses