RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The West African lungfish provides insights into the evolution of tetrapod tail regeneration
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.02.12.946319
DO 10.1101/2020.02.12.946319
A1 Kellen Matos Verissimo
A1 Louise Neiva Perez
A1 Aline Cutrim Dragalzew
A1 Gayani Senevirathne
A1 Sylvain Darnet
A1 Wainna Renata Barroso Mendes
A1 Ciro Ariel dos Santos Neves
A1 Erika Monteiro dos Santos
A1 Cassia Nazare de Sousa Moraes
A1 Neil Shubin
A1 Nadia Belinda Frobisch
A1 Josane de Freitas Sousa
A1 Igor Schneider
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/02/13/2020.02.12.946319.abstract
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.