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The Power of Simplicity: Sea Urchin Embryos as in Vivo Developmental Models for Studying Complex Cell-to-cell Signaling Network Interactions
Published on: February 16, 2017
Signaling mechanisms underlying metamorphic transitions in animals
Andreas Heyland1, Leonid L Moroz
1The Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience, University of Florida FL 32080, USA.
Integrative and Comparative Biology
|June 16, 2011
Summary
Metamorphosis involves simultaneous larval and adult development, requiring metamorphic competence. Key shared components include differentiation, degeneration, competence, and habitat change, with conserved stress and immune gene expression across diverse species.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Biology
- Evolutionary Biology
- Genomics
Background:
- Metamorphosis is a complex biological process involving radical body plan changes.
- It requires orchestrating simultaneous larval and juvenile/adult developmental programs.
- Metamorphic competence is the developmental potential to undergo this transition.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review metamorphosis across diverse taxa, including insects, amphibians, and marine invertebrates.
- To summarize the underlying mechanisms of metamorphic transitions.
- To explore the genetic and epigenetic architecture of metamorphosis using genomic approaches.
Main Methods:
- Review of existing studies employing genomic approaches like microarrays and subtractive hybridization.
- Comparative analysis of gene expression patterns across different animal groups.
- Examination of signaling pathways, including hormones and nitric oxide.
Main Results:
- All metamorphoses share four core components: differentiation of adult structures, degeneration of larval structures, metamorphic competence, and habitat change.
- Conserved gene expression patterns related to stress response, immunity, and apoptosis are observed across diverse phyla during metamorphosis.
- Hormonal and nitric oxide signaling pathways appear to regulate these stress-related responses.
Conclusions:
- Metamorphic transitions in distantly related animals may share regulatory machinery inherited from a common ancestor or independently co-opted.
- Homoplasy (independent evolution) in regulatory modules might arise from constraints in signal transduction pathways.
- Comparative genomics offers a powerful approach to investigate these homoplastic signaling modules.
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