Publication Date:
2004-05-08
Description:
Over 99% of modern animals are members of the evolutionary lineage Bilateria. The evolutionary success of Bilateria is credited partly to the origin of bilateral symmetry. Although animals of the phylum Cnidaria are not within the Bilateria, some representatives, such as the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis, exhibit bilateral symmetry. We show that Nematostella uses homologous genes to achieve bilateral symmetry: Multiple Hox genes are expressed in a staggered fashion along its primary body axis, and the transforming growth factor-beta gene decapentaplegic (dpp) is expressed in an asymmetric fashion about its secondary body axis. These data suggest that bilateral symmetry arose before the evolutionary split of Cnidaria and Bilateria.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Finnerty, John R -- Pang, Kevin -- Burton, Pat -- Paulson, Dave -- Martindale, Mark Q -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2004 May 28;304(5675):1335-7. Epub 2004 May 6.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Biology, Boston University, 5 Cummington Street, Boston, MA 02215, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15131263" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Amino Acid Sequence
;
Animals
;
Body Patterning
;
Endoderm/physiology
;
Gene Duplication
;
Gene Expression Profiling
;
*Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental
;
Genes
;
*Genes, Homeobox
;
In Situ Hybridization
;
Larva/genetics/growth & development
;
Molecular Sequence Data
;
Phylogeny
;
Sea Anemones/*anatomy & histology/embryology/*genetics/growth & development
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
