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Papadogiannis V, Hockman D, Mercurio S, Ramsay C, Hintze M, Patthey C, Streit A, Shimeld SM. Evolution of the expression and regulation of the nuclear hormone receptor ERR gene family in the chordate lineage. Dev Biol 2023; 504:12-24. [PMID: 37696353 DOI: 10.1016/j.ydbio.2023.09.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/27/2023] [Revised: 09/01/2023] [Accepted: 09/09/2023] [Indexed: 09/13/2023]
Abstract
The Estrogen Related Receptor (ERR) nuclear hormone receptor genes have a wide diversity of roles in vertebrate development. In embryos, ERR genes are expressed in several tissues, including the central and peripheral nervous systems. Here we seek to establish the evolutionary history of chordate ERR genes, their expression and their regulation. We examine ERR expression in mollusc, amphioxus and sea squirt embryos, finding the single ERR orthologue is expressed in the nervous system in all three, with muscle expression also found in the two chordates. We show that most jawed vertebrates and lampreys have four ERR paralogues, and that vertebrate ERR genes were ancestrally linked to Estrogen Receptor genes. One of the lamprey paralogues shares conserved expression domains with jawed vertebrate ERRγ in the embryonic vestibuloacoustic ganglion, eye, brain and spinal cord. Hypothesising that conserved expression derives from conserved regulation, we identify a suite of pan-vertebrate conserved non-coding sequences in ERR introns. We use transgenesis in lamprey and chicken embryos to show that these sequences are regulatory and drive reporter gene expression in the nervous system. Our data suggest an ancient association between ERR and the nervous system, including expression in cells associated with photosensation and mechanosensation. This includes the origin in the vertebrate common ancestor of a suite of regulatory elements in the 3' introns that drove nervous system expression and have been conserved from this point onwards.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Dorit Hockman
- Division of Cell Biology, Department of Human Biology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa; Neuroscience Institute, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
| | - Silvia Mercurio
- Department of Environmental Science and Policy, Università Degli Studi di Milano, Via Celoria 2, 20133, Milano, Italy
| | - Claire Ramsay
- Department of Biology, University of Oxford, 11a Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3SZ, UK
| | - Mark Hintze
- Centre for Craniofacial & Regenerative Biology, Faculty of Dentistry, Oral and Craniofacial Sciences, King's College London, London, UK
| | - Cedric Patthey
- Department of Radiosciences, Umeå University, 901 85, Umeå, Sweden
| | - Andrea Streit
- Centre for Craniofacial & Regenerative Biology, Faculty of Dentistry, Oral and Craniofacial Sciences, King's College London, London, UK
| | - Sebastian M Shimeld
- Department of Biology, University of Oxford, 11a Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3SZ, UK.
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Papadogiannis V, Pennati A, Parker HJ, Rothbächer U, Patthey C, Bronner ME, Shimeld SM. Hmx gene conservation identifies the origin of vertebrate cranial ganglia. Nature 2022; 605:701-705. [PMID: 35585239 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04742-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/14/2019] [Accepted: 04/07/2022] [Indexed: 12/30/2022]
Abstract
The evolutionary origin of vertebrates included innovations in sensory processing associated with the acquisition of a predatory lifestyle1. Vertebrates perceive external stimuli through sensory systems serviced by cranial sensory ganglia, whose neurons arise predominantly from cranial placodes; however, the understanding of the evolutionary origin of placodes and cranial sensory ganglia is hampered by the anatomical differences between living lineages and the difficulty in assigning homology between cell types and structures. Here we show that the homeobox transcription factor Hmx is a constitutive component of vertebrate sensory ganglion development and that in the tunicate Ciona intestinalis, Hmx is necessary and sufficient to drive the differentiation programme of bipolar tail neurons, cells previously thought to be homologues of neural crest2,3. Using Ciona and lamprey transgenesis, we demonstrate that a unique, tandemly duplicated enhancer pair regulated Hmx expression in the stem-vertebrate lineage. We also show notably robust vertebrate Hmx enhancer function in Ciona, demonstrating that deep conservation of the upstream regulatory network spans the evolutionary origin of vertebrates. These experiments demonstrate regulatory and functional conservation between Ciona and vertebrate Hmx, and point to bipolar tail neurons as homologues of cranial sensory ganglia.
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Affiliation(s)
- Vasileios Papadogiannis
- Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.,Institute of Marine Biology, Biotechnology and Aquaculture, Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Gournes, Crete, Greece
| | - Alessandro Pennati
- Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.,Institute of Zoology and Center of Molecular Biosciences, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
| | - Hugo J Parker
- Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, MO, USA
| | - Ute Rothbächer
- Institute of Zoology and Center of Molecular Biosciences, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
| | - Cedric Patthey
- Department of Radiation Sciences, Oncology, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden
| | - Marianne E Bronner
- Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
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Bradshaw SN, Allison WT. Hagfish to Illuminate the Developmental and Evolutionary Origins of the Vertebrate Retina. Front Cell Dev Biol 2022; 10:822358. [PMID: 35155434 PMCID: PMC8826474 DOI: 10.3389/fcell.2022.822358] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/25/2021] [Accepted: 01/07/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The vertebrate eye is a vital sensory organ that has long fascinated scientists, but the details of how this organ evolved are still unclear. The vertebrate eye is distinct from the simple photoreceptive organs of other non-vertebrate chordates and there are no clear transitional forms of the eye in the fossil record. To investigate the evolution of the eye we can examine the eyes of the most ancient extant vertebrates, the hagfish and lamprey. These jawless vertebrates are in an ideal phylogenetic position to study the origin of the vertebrate eye but data on eye/retina development in these organisms is limited. New genomic and gene expression data from hagfish and lamprey suggest they have many of the same genes for eye development and retinal neurogenesis as jawed vertebrates, but functional work to determine if these genes operate in retinogenesis similarly to other vertebrates is missing. In addition, hagfish express a marker of proliferative retinal cells (Pax6) near the margin of the retina, and adult retinal growth is apparent in some species. This finding of eye growth late into hagfish ontogeny is unexpected given the degenerate eye phenotype. Further studies dissecting retinal neurogenesis in jawless vertebrates would allow for comparison of the mechanisms of retinal development between cyclostome and gnathostome eyes and provide insight into the evolutionary origins of the vertebrate eye.
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Lara-Ramirez R, Pérez-González C, Anselmi C, Patthey C, Shimeld SM. A Notch-regulated proliferative stem cell zone in the developing spinal cord is an ancestral vertebrate trait. Development 2019; 146:dev.166595. [PMID: 30552127 DOI: 10.1242/dev.166595] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/10/2018] [Accepted: 11/26/2018] [Indexed: 01/01/2023]
Abstract
Vertebrates have evolved the most sophisticated nervous systems we know. These differ from the nervous systems of invertebrates in several ways, including the evolution of new cell types, and the emergence and elaboration of patterning mechanisms to organise cells in time and space. Vertebrates also generally have many more cells in their central nervous systems than invertebrates, and an increase in neural cell number may have contributed to the sophisticated anatomy of the brain and spinal cord. Here, we study how increased cell number evolved in the vertebrate central nervous system, investigating the regulation of cell proliferation in the lamprey spinal cord. Markers of proliferation show that a ventricular progenitor zone is found throughout the lamprey spinal cord. We show that inhibition of Notch signalling disrupts the maintenance of this zone. When Notch is blocked, progenitor cells differentiate precociously, the proliferative ventricular zone is lost and differentiation markers become expressed throughout the spinal cord. Comparison with other chordates suggests that the emergence of a persistent Notch-regulated proliferative progenitor zone was a crucial step for the evolution of vertebrate spinal cord complexity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ricardo Lara-Ramirez
- Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, 11a Mansfield Road, Oxford OX1 3SZ, UK
| | | | - Chiara Anselmi
- Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, 11a Mansfield Road, Oxford OX1 3SZ, UK
| | - Cedric Patthey
- Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, 11a Mansfield Road, Oxford OX1 3SZ, UK
| | - Sebastian M Shimeld
- Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, 11a Mansfield Road, Oxford OX1 3SZ, UK
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The structure, splicing, synteny and expression of lamprey COE genes and the evolution of the COE gene family in chordates. Dev Genes Evol 2017; 227:319-338. [DOI: 10.1007/s00427-017-0591-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/13/2016] [Accepted: 08/20/2017] [Indexed: 10/18/2022]
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Cooper KL, Shapiro MD. Preface to the special issue on evolution and morphological diversity. Dev Dyn 2016; 244:1181-3. [PMID: 26414755 DOI: 10.1002/dvdy.24346] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/06/2022] Open
Affiliation(s)
- Kimberly L Cooper
- Division of Biological Sciences, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California
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