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  • Developmental transcriptomes of the sea star, Patiria miniata, illuminate how gene expression changes with evolutionary distance
Title: Developmental transcriptomes of the sea star, Patiria miniata, illuminate how gene expression changes with evolutionary distance
Abstract

Understanding how changes in developmental gene expression alter morphogenesis is a fundamental problem in development and evolution. A promising approach to address this problem is to compare the developmental transcriptomes between related species. The echinoderm phylum consists of several model species that have significantly contributed to the understanding of gene regulation and evolution. Particularly, the regulatory networks of the sea star,Patiria miniata(P.miniata), have been extensively studied, however developmental transcriptomes for this species were lacking. Here we generated developmental transcriptomes ofP.miniataand compared these with those of two sea urchins species. We demonstrate that the conservation of gene expression depends on gene function, cell type and evolutionary distance. With increasing evolutionary distance the interspecies correlations in gene expression decreases. The reduction is more severe in the correlations between morphologically equivalent stages (diagonal elements) than in the correlation between morphologically distinct stages (off-diagonal elements). This could reflect a decrease in the morphological constraints compared to other constraints that shape gene expression at large evolutionary divergence. Within this trend, the interspecies correlations of developmental control genes maintain their diagonality at large evolutionary distance, and peak at the onset of gastrulation, supporting the hourglass model of phylotypic stage conservation.

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Award ID(s):
1715721
NSF-PAR ID:
10153766
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ;
Publisher / Repository:
Nature Publishing Group
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Scientific Reports
Volume:
9
Issue:
1
ISSN:
2045-2322
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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