Articles

Placental expression of pituitary hormones is an ancestral feature of therian mammals

The placenta is essential for supplying nutrients and gases to the developing mammalian young before birth. While all mammals have a functional placenta, only in therian mammals (marsupials and eutherians) doe...

Authors: Brandon R Menzies, Andrew J Pask and Marilyn B Renfree

A study of neural-related microRNAs in the developing amphioxus

MicroRNAs are small noncoding RNAs regulating expression of protein coding genes at post-transcriptional level and controlling several biological processes. At present microRNAs have been identified in various...

Authors: Simona Candiani, Luca Moronti, Davide De Pietri Tonelli, Greta Garbarino and Mario Pestarino

Developmental evolution of flowering plant pollen tube cell walls: callose synthase (CalS) gene expression patterns

A number of innovations underlie the origin of rapid reproductive cycles in angiosperms. A critical early step involved the modification of an ancestrally short and slow-growing pollen tube for faster and long...

Authors: Jason M Abercrombie, Brian C O'Meara, Andrew R Moffatt and Joseph H Williams

Gene expression in bryozoan larvae suggest a fundamental importance of pre-patterned blastemic cells in the bryozoan life-cycle

Bryozoa is a clade of aquatic protostomes. The bryozoan life cycle typically comprises a larval stage, which metamorphoses into a sessile adult that proliferates by asexual budding to form colonies. The homolo...

Authors: Judith Fuchs, Mark Q Martindale and Andreas Hejnol

Multiple Sox genes are expressed in stem cells or in differentiating neuro-sensory cells in the hydrozoan Clytia hemisphaerica

The Sox genes are important regulators of animal development belonging to the HMG domain-containing class of transcription factors. Studies in bilaterian models have notably highlighted their pivotal role in cont...

Authors: Muriel Jager, Eric Quéinnec, Hervé Le Guyader and Michaël Manuel

Breaking evolutionary and pleiotropic constraints in mammals: On sloths, manatees and homeotic mutations

Mammals as a rule have seven cervical vertebrae, except for sloths and manatees. Bateson proposed that the change in the number of cervical vertebrae in sloths is due to homeotic transformations. A recent hypo...

Authors: Irma Varela-Lasheras, Alexander J Bakker, Steven D van der Mije, Johan AJ Metz, Joris van Alphen and Frietson Galis

Somatic and germline expression of piwi during development and regeneration in the marine polychaete annelid Capitella teleta

Stem cells have a critical role during adult growth and regeneration. Germline stem cells are specialized stem cells that produce gametes during sexual reproduction. Capitella teleta (formerly Capitella sp. I) is...

Authors: Vincent C Giani Jr, Emi Yamaguchi, Michael J Boyle and Elaine C Seaver

Involvement of the conserved Hox gene Antennapedia in the development and evolution of a novel trait

Hox proteins specify segment identity during embryogenesis and have typical associated expression patterns. Changes in embryonic expression and activity of Hox genes were crucial in the evolution of animal body p...

Authors: Suzanne V Saenko, Marta SP Marialva and Patrícia Beldade

The Pax gene eyegone facilitates repression of eye development in Tribolium

The Pax transcription factor gene eyegone (eyg) participates in many developmental processes in Drosophila, including the Notch signaling activated postembryonic growth of the eye primordium, global development o...

Authors: Nazanin ZarinKamar, Xiaoyun Yang, Riyue Bao, Frank Friedrich, Rolf Beutel and Markus Friedrich

Rapid isolation of gene homologs across taxa: Efficient identification and isolation of gene orthologs from non-model organism genomes, a technical report

Tremendous progress has been made in the field of evo-devo through comparisons of related genes from diverse taxa. While the vast number of species in nature precludes a complete analysis of the molecular evol...

Authors: Alison Heffer and Leslie Pick

Ciliary photoreceptors in the cerebral eyes of a protostome larva

Eyes in bilaterian metazoans have been described as being composed of either ciliary or rhabdomeric photoreceptors. Phylogenetic distribution, as well as distinct morphologies and characteristic deployment of ...

Authors: Yale J Passamaneck, Nina Furchheim, Andreas Hejnol, Mark Q Martindale and Carsten Lüter

Expression of myriapod pair rule gene orthologs

Segmentation is a hallmark of the arthropods; most knowledge about the molecular basis of arthropod segmentation comes from work on the fly Drosophila melanogaster. In this species a hierarchic cascade of segment...

Authors: Ralf Janssen, Graham E Budd, Nikola-Michael Prpic and Wim GM Damen

Environmental and molecular analysis of the floral transition in the lower eudicot Aquilegia formosa

Flowering is a critical transition in plant development, the timing of which can have considerable fitness consequences. Until recently, research into the genetic control of flowering time and its associated d...

Authors: Evangeline S Ballerini and Elena M Kramer

Nuclear receptors from the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi lack a zinc-finger DNA-binding domain: lineage-specific loss or ancestral condition in the emergence of the nuclear receptor superfamily?

Nuclear receptors (NRs) are an ancient superfamily of metazoan transcription factors that play critical roles in regulation of reproduction, development, and energetic homeostasis. Although the evolutionary re...

Authors: Adam M Reitzel, Kevin Pang, Joseph F Ryan, James C Mullikin, Mark Q Martindale, Andreas D Baxevanis and Ann M Tarrant

Strabismus-mediated primary archenteron invagination is uncoupled from Wnt/β-catenin-dependent endoderm cell fate specification in Nematostella vectensis (Anthozoa, Cnidaria): Implications for the evolution of gastrulation

Gastrulation is a uniquely metazoan character, and its genesis was arguably the key step that enabled the remarkable diversification within this clade. The process of gastrulation involves two tightly coupled ...

Authors: Shalika Kumburegama, Naveen Wijesena, Ronghui Xu and Athula H Wikramanayake

Ancestral and derived attributes of the dlx gene repertoire, cluster structure and expression patterns in an African cichlid fish

Cichlid fishes have undergone rapid, expansive evolutionary radiations that are manifested in the diversification of their trophic morphologies, tooth patterning and coloration. Understanding the molecular mec...

Authors: Adina J Renz, Helen M Gunter, Jan MF Fischer, Huan Qiu, Axel Meyer and Shigehiro Kuraku

Six3 demarcates the anterior-most developing brain region in bilaterian animals

The heads of annelids (earthworms, polychaetes, and others) and arthropods (insects, myriapods, spiders, and others) and the arthropod-related onychophorans (velvet worms) show similar brain architecture and f...

Authors: Patrick RH Steinmetz, Rolf Urbach, Nico Posnien, Joakim Eriksson, Roman P Kostyuchenko, Carlo Brena, Keren Guy, Michael Akam, Gregor Bucher and Detlev Arendt

Floral homeotic C function genes repress specific B function genes in the carpel whorl of the basal eudicot California poppy (Eschscholzia californica)

The floral homeotic C function gene AGAMOUS (AG) confers stamen and carpel identity and is involved in the regulation of floral meristem termination in Arabidopsis. Arabidopsis ag mutants show complete homeotic c...

Authors: Aravinda L Yellina, Svetlana Orashakova, Sabrina Lange, Robert Erdmann, Jim Leebens-Mack and Annette Becker

Expression and phylogenetic analysis of the zic gene family in the evolution and development of metazoans

zic genes are members of the gli/glis/nkl/zic super-family of C2H2 zinc finger (ZF) transcription factors. Homologs of the zic family have been implicated in patterning neural and mesodermal tissues in bilaterian...

Authors: Michael J Layden, Néva P Meyer, Kevin Pang, Elaine C Seaver and Mark Q Martindale

Conservation of shh cis-regulatory architecture of the coelacanth is consistent with its ancestral phylogenetic position

The modern coelacanth (Latimeria) is the extant taxon of a basal sarcopterygian lineage and sister group to tetrapods. Apart from certain apomorphic traits, its morphology is characterized by a high degree of ret...

Authors: Michael Lang, Yavor Hadzhiev, Nicol Siegel, Chris T Amemiya, Carolina Parada, Uwe Strähle, May-Britt Becker, Ferenc Müller and Axel Meyer

Genomic insights into Wnt signaling in an early diverging metazoan, the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi

Intercellular signaling pathways are a fundamental component of the integrating cellular behavior required for the evolution of multicellularity. The genomes of three of the four early branching animal phyla (...

Authors: Kevin Pang, Joseph F Ryan, James C Mullikin, Andreas D Baxevanis and Mark Q Martindale

The homeodomain complement of the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi suggests that Ctenophora and Porifera diverged prior to the ParaHoxozoa

The much-debated phylogenetic relationships of the five early branching metazoan lineages (Bilateria, Cnidaria, Ctenophora, Placozoa and Porifera) are of fundamental importance in piecing together events that ...

Authors: Joseph F Ryan, Kevin Pang, James C Mullikin, Mark Q Martindale and Andreas D Baxevanis

A comprehensive fate map by intracellular injection of identified blastomeres in the marine polychaete Capitella teleta

The polychaete annelid Capitella teleta (formerly Capitella sp. I) develops by spiral cleavage and has been the focus of several recent developmental studies aided by a fully sequenced genome. Fate mapping in pol...

Authors: Néva P Meyer, Michael J Boyle, Mark Q Martindale and Elaine C Seaver

Conserved developmental expression of Fezf in chordates and Drosophila and the origin of the Zona Limitans Intrathalamica (ZLI) brain organizer

The zona limitans intrathalamica (ZLI) and the isthmus organizer (IsO) are two major secondary organizers of vertebrate brain development. These organizers are located at the interface of the expression domains o...

Authors: Manuel Irimia, Cristina Piñeiro, Ignacio Maeso, José Luis Gómez-Skarmeta, Fernando Casares and Jordi Garcia-Fernàndez

Early development of Ensatina eschscholtzii: an amphibian with a large, yolky egg

Comparative analyses between amphibians, concentrating on the cellular mechanisms of morphogenesis, reveal a large variability in the early developmental processes that were thought to be conserved during evol...

Authors: Andres Collazo and Ray Keller

Germ cell specification and ovary structure in the rotifer Brachionus plicatilis

The segregation of the germline from somatic tissues is an essential process in the development of all animals. Specification of the primordial germ cells (PGCs) takes place via different strategies across ani...

Authors: James M Smith, Andrew G Cridge and Peter K Dearden

Gene expression suggests conserved aspects of Hox gene regulation in arthropods and provides additional support for monophyletic Myriapoda

Antisense transcripts of Ultrabithorax (aUbx) in the millipede Glomeris and the centipede Lithobius are expressed in patterns complementary to that of the Ubx sense transcripts. A similar complementary expression...

Authors: Ralf Janssen and Graham E Budd

A conserved cluster of three PRD-class homeobox genes (homeobrain, rx and orthopedia) in the Cnidaria and Protostomia

Homeobox genes are a superclass of transcription factors with diverse developmental regulatory functions, which are found in plants, fungi and animals. In animals, several Antennapedia (ANTP)-class homeobox ge...

Authors: Maureen E Mazza, Kevin Pang, Adam M Reitzel, Mark Q Martindale and John R Finnerty

Expression of FoxA and GATA transcription factors correlates with regionalized gut development in two lophotrochozoan marine worms: Chaetopterus (Annelida) and Themiste lageniformis (Sipuncula)

A through gut is present in almost all metazoans, and most likely represents an ancient innovation that enabled bilaterian animals to exploit a wide range of habitats. Molecular developmental studies indicate ...

Authors: Michael J Boyle and Elaine C Seaver

Welcome to open access publishing at EvoDevo: a macroevolutionary change in sharing data

Authors: Mark Q Martindale and Maximilian J Telford