PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Kellen Matos Verissimo
AU  - Louise Neiva Perez
AU  - Aline Cutrim Dragalzew
AU  - Gayani Senevirathne
AU  - Sylvain Darnet
AU  - Wainna Renata Barroso Mendes
AU  - Ciro Ariel dos Santos Neves
AU  - Erika Monteiro dos Santos
AU  - Cassia Nazare de Sousa Moraes
AU  - Neil Shubin
AU  - Nadia Belinda Frobisch
AU  - Josane de Freitas Sousa
AU  - Igor Schneider
TI  - The West African lungfish provides insights into the evolution of tetrapod tail regeneration
AID  - 10.1101/2020.02.12.946319
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.02.12.946319
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/02/13/2020.02.12.946319.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/02/13/2020.02.12.946319.full
AB  - Salamanders, frog tadpoles, and lizards possess the remarkable ability to regenerate tails. The fossil record suggests that this capacity is an ancestral tetrapod trait, yet its evolutionary history remains unclear. Here we examine tail regeneration in a living representative of the sister group of tetrapods, the West African lungfish Protopterus annectens. We show that, as seen in salamanders, lungfish tail regeneration occurs via formation of a proliferative blastema and restores original structures including muscle, skeleton and spinal cord. Contrary to lizards and similar to salamanders, lungfish regenerate spinal cord neurons and reconstitute dorsoventral patterning of the tail. Similar to salamander and frog tadpoles, we show that Shh is required for lungfish tail regeneration. Through RNA-seq analysis of uninjured and regenerating tail blastema we show that lungfish deploy a genetic program comparable to that of tetrapods, showing upregulation of genes and signaling pathways previously implicated in amphibian and lizard tail regeneration. Furthermore, the tail blastema showed marked upregulation of genes encoding post-transcriptional RNA processing components and transposon-derived genes. Collectively, our study establishes the lungfish as a valuable research system for regenerative biology and provides insights into the evolution of cellular and molecular processes underlying vertebrate tail regeneration.