RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Muscle cell type diversification facilitated by extensive gene duplications
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.07.19.210658
DO 10.1101/2020.07.19.210658
A1 Alison G. Cole
A1 Sabrina Kaul
A1 Stefan M. Jahnel
A1 Julia Steger
A1 Bob Zimmerman
A1 Robert Reischl
A1 Gemma Sian Richards
A1 Fabian Rentzsch
A1 Patrick Steinmetz
A1 Ulrich Technau
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/07/19/2020.07.19.210658.abstract
AB The evolutionary mechanisms underlying the emergence of new cell types are still unclear. Here, we address the origin and diversification of muscle cells in the diploblastic sea anemone Nematostella vectensis. We discern two fast and two slow-contracting muscle cell populations in Nematostella differing by extensive sets of paralogous genes. The regulatory gene set of the slow cnidarian muscles and the bilaterian cardiac muscle are remarkably similar. By contrast, the two fast muscles differ substantially from each other, while driving the same set of paralogous structural protein genes. Our data suggest that extensive gene duplications and co-option of individual effector modules may have played an important role in cell type diversification during metazoan evolution.One Sentence Summary The study of the simple sea anemone suggests a molecular mechanism for cell type evolution and morphological complexity.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.