TY - JOUR
T1 - Hagfish and lamprey Hox genes reveal conservation of temporal colinearity in vertebrates
AU - Pascual-Anaya, Juan
AU - Sato, Iori
AU - Sugahara, Fumiaki
AU - Higuchi, Shinnosuke
AU - Paps, Jordi
AU - Ren, Yandong
AU - Takagi, Wataru
AU - Ruiz-Villalba, Adrián
AU - Ota, Kinya G.
AU - Wang, Wen
AU - Kuratani, Shigeru
PY - 2018/5
Y1 - 2018/5
N2 - Hox genes exert fundamental roles for proper regional specification along the main rostro-caudal axis of animal embryos. They are generally expressed in restricted spatial domains according to their position in the cluster (spatial colinearity)-a feature that is conserved across bilaterians. In jawed vertebrates (gnathostomes), the position in the cluster also determines the onset of expression of Hox genes (a feature known as whole-cluster temporal colinearity (WTC)), while in invertebrates this phenomenon is displayed as a subcluster-level temporal colinearity. However, little is known about the expression profile of Hox genes in jawless vertebrates (cyclostomes); therefore, the evolutionary origin of WTC, as seen in gnathostomes, remains a mystery. Here, we show that Hox genes in cyclostomes are expressed according to WTC during development. We investigated the Hox repertoire and Hox gene expression profiles in three different species-a hagfish, a lamprey and a shark-encompassing the two major groups of vertebrates, and found that these are expressed following a whole-cluster, temporally staggered pattern, indicating that WTC has been conserved during the past 500 million years despite drastically different genome evolution and morphological outputs between jawless and jawed vertebrates.
AB - Hox genes exert fundamental roles for proper regional specification along the main rostro-caudal axis of animal embryos. They are generally expressed in restricted spatial domains according to their position in the cluster (spatial colinearity)-a feature that is conserved across bilaterians. In jawed vertebrates (gnathostomes), the position in the cluster also determines the onset of expression of Hox genes (a feature known as whole-cluster temporal colinearity (WTC)), while in invertebrates this phenomenon is displayed as a subcluster-level temporal colinearity. However, little is known about the expression profile of Hox genes in jawless vertebrates (cyclostomes); therefore, the evolutionary origin of WTC, as seen in gnathostomes, remains a mystery. Here, we show that Hox genes in cyclostomes are expressed according to WTC during development. We investigated the Hox repertoire and Hox gene expression profiles in three different species-a hagfish, a lamprey and a shark-encompassing the two major groups of vertebrates, and found that these are expressed following a whole-cluster, temporally staggered pattern, indicating that WTC has been conserved during the past 500 million years despite drastically different genome evolution and morphological outputs between jawless and jawed vertebrates.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85044718049&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41559-018-0526-2
DO - 10.1038/s41559-018-0526-2
M3 - Article (Academic Journal)
C2 - 29610468
AN - SCOPUS:85044718049
SN - 2397-334X
VL - 2
SP - 859
EP - 866
JO - Nature Ecology and Evolution
JF - Nature Ecology and Evolution
IS - 5
ER -