An international collaborative research group led by Associate Professor Naoki Irie of the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Science has clarified part of the reason why the basic structure of vertebrates has not changed for more than 5 million years.
Since the emergence of animals with spines (vertebrates), including humans, more than 5 million years ago, they have evolved into animal species with various body shapes and have diversified.However, all vertebrate species have surprisingly common basic anatomical features.Compared to the diversification of body size and color, there has been little change in organ binding for hundreds of millions of years.The key to solving these mysteries is thought to be in the embryonic development process from the fertilized egg to the appearance of an adult, and has attracted attention.
This time, in order to solve this mystery, the group acquired gene transcript information from the early to late stages of embryogenesis in eight species of chordates on a large scale using a massively parallel sequencer and used a computer. Data analysis was performed.
As a result, it was clarified that, contrary to the conjecture previously thought, the majority of genes working in the organogenesis stage are genes that are reused in other developmental stages.In addition, it was clarified that the higher the ratio of reused genes is, the less diverse the evolution is, and the more frequently reused genes are, the more essential they are for survival.These achievements were published online in the British scientific journal Nature Ecology & Evolution on September 2017, 9.
Paper information:[Nature Ecology & Evolution] Constrained vertebrate evolution by pleiotropic genes
