RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The evolution of Sox gene repertoires and regulation of segmentation in arachnids
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.06.04.133389
DO 10.1101/2020.06.04.133389
A1 Luis Baudouin-Gonzalez
A1 Anna Schoenauer
A1 Amber Harper
A1 Grace Blakeley
A1 Michael Seiter
A1 Saad Arif
A1 Lauren Sumner-Rooney
A1 Steven Russell
A1 Prashant P. Sharma
A1 Alistair P. McGregor
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/06/04/2020.06.04.133389.abstract
AB The Sox family of transcription factors regulate many different processes during metazoan development, including stem cell maintenance, nervous system specification and germline development. In addition, it has recently become apparent that SoxB genes are involved in embryonic segmentation in several arthropod species. Segmentation in arthropods occurs in two main ways: long germ animals form all segments at once, best exemplified in the well-studied Drosophila melanogaster system, and short germ animals form anterior segments simultaneously, with posterior segments added sequentially from a segment addition zone. In both D. melanogaster and the short germ beetle Tribolium castaneum, the SoxB gene Dichaete is required for correct segmentation and, more recently, we showed that a close relative of Dichaete, Sox21b-1, is required for the simultaneous formation of prosomal segments and sequential addition of opisthosomal segments in the spider Parasteatoda tepidariorum. Here we further analysed the function and expression of Sox21b-1 in P. tepidariorum. We found that while this gene regulates the generation of both prosomal and opisthosomal segments, it plays different roles in the formation of these tagma reflecting their contrasting modes of segmentation and deployment of gene regulatory networks with different architectures. To further investigate the evolution of Sox genes and their roles we characterised the repertoire of the gene family across several arachnid species with and without an ancestral whole genome duplication, and compared Sox expression between P. tepidariorum and the harvestman Phalangium opilio. The results suggest that Sox21b-1 was likely involved in segmentation ancestrally in arachnids, but that other Sox genes could also regulate this process in these animals. We also found that most Sox families have been retained as duplicates or ohnologs after WGD and evidence for potential subfunctionalisation and/or neofunctionalization events.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.