Publication Date:
2008-08-23
Description:
As arguably the simplest free-living animals, placozoans may represent a primitive metazoan form, yet their biology is poorly understood. Here we report the sequencing and analysis of the approximately 98 million base pair nuclear genome of the placozoan Trichoplax adhaerens. Whole-genome phylogenetic analysis suggests that placozoans belong to a 'eumetazoan' clade that includes cnidarians and bilaterians, with sponges as the earliest diverging animals. The compact genome shows conserved gene content, gene structure and synteny in relation to the human and other complex eumetazoan genomes. Despite the apparent cellular and organismal simplicity of Trichoplax, its genome encodes a rich array of transcription factor and signalling pathway genes that are typically associated with diverse cell types and developmental processes in eumetazoans, motivating further searches for cryptic cellular complexity and/or as yet unobserved life history stages.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Srivastava, Mansi -- Begovic, Emina -- Chapman, Jarrod -- Putnam, Nicholas H -- Hellsten, Uffe -- Kawashima, Takeshi -- Kuo, Alan -- Mitros, Therese -- Salamov, Asaf -- Carpenter, Meredith L -- Signorovitch, Ana Y -- Moreno, Maria A -- Kamm, Kai -- Grimwood, Jane -- Schmutz, Jeremy -- Shapiro, Harris -- Grigoriev, Igor V -- Buss, Leo W -- Schierwater, Bernd -- Dellaporta, Stephen L -- Rokhsar, Daniel S -- England -- Nature. 2008 Aug 21;454(7207):955-60. doi: 10.1038/nature07191.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Center for Integrative Genomics and Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA. msrivast@berkeley.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18719581" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Cell Adhesion
;
Conserved Sequence
;
Extracellular Matrix/genetics
;
Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental
;
Genome/*genetics
;
Germ Cells
;
Humans
;
Invertebrates/anatomy & histology/classification/*genetics/*physiology
;
Phylogeny
;
Reproduction/genetics
;
Sequence Analysis, DNA
;
Sex
;
Signal Transduction
;
Synteny
;
Transcription Factors/genetics
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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