PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Harada, Yoshito
TI  - Deciphering the developmental program in the ascidian <em>Ciona intestinalis</em> just prior to gastrulation
AID  - 10.1101/137166
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 137166
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/05/12/137166.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/05/12/137166.full
AB  - The embryo of the ascidian Ciona intestinalis displays striking anatomical simplicity, with an invariant cleavage pattern during development. It has a monoploid genome like the model organisms Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans, whereas vertebrates generally exhibit tetraploidy. In this study, I took advantage of these characteristics to investigate the development of the organism as one reverse-engineers an industrial product. First, the spatial expression of 211 genes was digitalized. Some genes showed variable expression patterns, which might reflect multiple snapshots of a single temporally dynamic expression at different times. Several developmental territories of the embryo were considered to be very similar to each other; however, this digitalization of gene expression patterns showed that differences occurred between individual blastomeres even within a single developmental territory. Furthermore, Ciona Brachyury (Ci-Bra) was expressed in those blastomeres in which both Fox (forkhead-box) A-a and Zic (zinc-finger) L were expressed, these proteins being upstream regulators of Ci-Bra. The approach described enables the developmental program to be studied in silico.SUMMARY STATEMENT A detailed expansion of our knowledge on an animal developmental program by using already published gene expression data with the aid of computers