Amphioxus FGF signaling predicts the acquisition of vertebrate morphological traits.

FGF signaling is one of the few cell-cell signaling pathways conserved among all metazoans. The diversity of FGF gene content among different phyla suggests that evolution of FGF signaling may have participated in generating the current variety of animal forms. Vertebrates possess the greatest number of FGF genes, the functional evolution of which may have been implicated in the acquisition of vertebrate-specific morphological traits. In this study, we have investigated the roles of the FGF signal during embryogenesis of the cephalochordate amphioxus, the best proxy for the chordate ancestor. We first isolate the full FGF gene complement and determine the evolutionary relationships between amphioxus and vertebrate FGFs via phylogenetic and synteny conservation analysis. Using pharmacological treatments, we inhibit the FGF signaling pathway in amphioxus embryos in different time windows. Our results show that the requirement for FGF signaling during gastrulation is a conserved character among chordates, whereas this signal is not necessary for neural induction in amphioxus, in contrast to what is known in vertebrates. We also show that FGF signal, acting through the MAPK pathway, is necessary for the formation of the most anterior somites in amphioxus, whereas more posterior somite formation is not FGF-dependent. This result leads us to propose that modification of the FGF signal function in the anterior paraxial mesoderm in an amphioxus-like vertebrate ancestor might have contributed to the loss of segmentation in the preotic paraxial mesoderm of the vertebrate head.

Sequencing and analysis of the Mediterranean amphioxus (Branchiostoma lanceolatum) transcriptome.

BACKGROUND: The basally divergent phylogenetic position of amphioxus (Cephalochordata), as well as its conserved morphology, development and genetics, make it the best proxy for the chordate ancestor. Particularly, studies using the amphioxus model help our understanding of vertebrate evolution and development. Thus, interest for the amphioxus model led to the characterization of both the transcriptome and complete genome sequence of the American species, Branchiostoma floridae. However, recent technical improvements allowing induction of spawning in the laboratory during the breeding season on a daily basis with the Mediterranean species Branchiostoma lanceolatum have encouraged European Evo-Devo researchers to adopt this species as a model even though no genomic or transcriptomic data have been available. To fill this need we used the pyrosequencing method to characterize the B. lanceolatum transcriptome and then compared our results with the published transcriptome of B. floridae. RESULTS: Starting with total RNA from nine different developmental stages of B. lanceolatum, a normalized cDNA library was constructed and sequenced on Roche GS FLX (Titanium mode). Around 1.4 million of reads were produced and assembled into 70,530 contigs (average length of 490 bp). Overall 37% of the assembled sequences were annotated by BlastX and their Gene Ontology terms were determined. These results were then compared to genomic and transcriptomic data of B. floridae to assess similarities and specificities of each species. CONCLUSION: We obtained a high-quality amphioxus (B. lanceolatum) reference transcriptome using a high throughput sequencing approach. We found that 83% of the predicted genes in the B. floridae complete genome sequence are also found in the B. lanceolatum transcriptome, while only 41% were found in the B. floridae transcriptome obtained with traditional Sanger based sequencing. Therefore, given the high degree of sequence conservation between different amphioxus species, this set of ESTs may now be used as the reference transcriptome for the Branchiostoma genus.

Nuclear hormone receptors in chordates.

In order to understand evolution of the endocrine systems in chordates, study of the evolution of the nuclear receptors (NRs), which mediate the cellular responses to several key hormones, is of major interest. Thanks to the sequencing of several complete genomes of different species in the three chordate phyla, we now have a global view of the evolution of the nuclear receptors gene content in this lineage. The challenge is now to understand how the function of the different receptors evolved during the invertebrate-chordate to vertebrate transition by studying the functional properties of the NRs using comparative approaches in different species. The best available model system to answer this question is the cephalochordate amphioxus which has a NR gene complement close to that of the chordate ancestor. Here we review the available data concerning the function of the amphioxus NRs, and we discuss some evolutionary scenarios that can be drawn from these results.

Amphioxus Tbx6/16 and Tbx20 embryonic expression patterns reveal ancestral functions in chordates.

T-box transcription factors are found in all metazoans and play diverse roles during embryogenesis. In the cephalochordate amphioxus, nine T-box genes were previously identified. In this work we undertook the analysis of the embryonic expression pattern of Tbx6/16 and Tbx20, the last two T-box genes for which no such data are available. We found that Tbx6/16 is expressed in the unsegmented paraxial mesoderm, in a subpopulation of neurons, and in the tail epidermis. Comparison with the expression patterns of the different vertebrate orthologues indicates a conserved role of those genes in posterior mesoderm formation in chordates. Tbx20 expression is detected in the ventral mesoderm of amphioxus embryos, in cells that are proposed to be precursors of the amphioxus myocardium, in some neurons of the neural tube, and in the pre-oral pit which is thought to be the homologue of the vertebrate adenohypophysis. In vertebrates, Tbx20 is also one of the first genes expressed in the embryonic heart field, suggesting that the function of this gene in heart development has been conserved during chordate evolution.