Lampreys are one of only two living jawless vertebrates Jaws are formed by a key stem cell population called the neural crest New research reveals the gene regulatory changes that may explain morphological differences between jawed and jawless vertebrates.
One of just two vertebrates without a jaw, sea lampreys that are wreaking havoc in Midwestern fisheries are simultaneously helping scientists understand the origins of two important stem cells that drove the evolution of vertebrates.
In a new paper, researchers compared lamprey genes to those of the Xenopus, a jawed aquatic frog. Using comparative transcriptomics, the study revealed a strikingly similar pluripotency gene network across jawless and jawed vertebrates, even at the level of transcript abundance for key regulatory factors.
An expert in developmental biology, LaBonne is a professor of molecular biosciences in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. She holds the Erastus Otis Haven Chair and is part of the leadership of the National Science Foundation's new Simons National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology.
While blastula stage embryonic stem cells lose their pluripotency and become confined to distinct cell types fairly rapidly as an embryo develops, neural crest cells hold onto the molecular toolkit that controls pluripotency later into development. "While most of the genes controlling pluripotency are expressed in the lamprey neural crest, the expression of one of these key genes -- pou5 -- was lost from these cells," York said."Amazingly, even though pou5 isn't expressed in a lamprey's neural crest, it could promote neural crest formation when we expressed it in frogs, suggesting this gene is part of an ancient pluripotency network that was present in our earliest vertebrate ancestors.
The paper was funded by the National Institutes of Health , the NSF , the Simons Foundation and the Walder Foundation through the Life Sciences Research Foundation. The study is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Joseph Walder.
Biotechnology Genetics Biotechnology And Bioengineering Evolution Charles Darwin Origin Of Life Early Humans
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