Effect of elevated temperature on early embryo development

(Already a researcher in Biology? See this preprint.)

What's the basic question? 

Ambient temperature affects all living beings, with each species having a temperature range within which it is "happy". Outside of this range, life is difficult. I want to understand how different species react to changes in temperature at the higher limit, what sort of defects can be observed at that high temperature, and if there are genetic modifications that can improve the performance of the species at these higher temperatures. 

Why is this question important? 

As we know, global warming is threatening the life on earth. There is a significant reduction in biomass, which is bad for the balance of ecosystems. The rate at which the global average temperature is rising can have unpredictable impacts on our ecosystems. Here we need to first understand the impact on animals (and also plants, but unfortunately that's not my expertise) during various stages of their life to identify vulnerabilities. Once we have an understanding of what can go wrong, only then can we figure out a remedy, assuming that that's even possible. We already know that high temperature is bad for the early stages of life, even before birth. For instance, high temperature in mothers (due to, say, fever) has been associated with an increased risk of birth defects in the newborn baby. Such defects seem to be universal, which is bad because that means that global warming can impact the early stages of life in all animals. 

What am I doing to address the question? 

Since all animals are affected by heightened temperature, I am focusing on animals that are easier to experiment with. Fruit fly embryos are an excellent "genetic model organism" for doing experiments. Using their embryos, I am doing experiments, which involve putting the embryos at high temperatures and describing the defects we can see. One of the aims is also to test the function of various genes to rescue these defects to make embryo development robust against temperature spikes. 

I am using various microscopy techniques to study the development of embryos at high temperatures. These experiments allow me to identify the defects that happen due to exposure to high temperatures. So far, I have found that the process of cell divisions might be challenged at high temperatures. This process is conserved across all life forms (with some variation), which makes it especially interesting to study how it is disturbed at high temperatures. 

What do I hope to achieve? 

With the understanding gained from my experiments, I will try to further the knowledge about how high temperature affects animals to, hopefully, suggest some strategies to mitigate the impact of global warming.