AI Article Synopsis

  • Sea urchins serve as important models in developmental biology, and researchers created a detailed genome assembly to investigate their unique genetic traits compared to other deuterostomes.
  • The study revealed that sea urchins maintain ancestral chromosome linkages but experience rapid shuffling of gene order, alongside a significant increase in gene duplication in their lineage.
  • Key discoveries include the evolution of new structures from these duplicated genes and the conservation of certain gene-regulatory modules between sea urchins and chordates, indicating a shared developmental framework despite significant genomic changes.

Article Abstract

Sea urchins are emblematic models in developmental biology and display several characteristics that set them apart from other deuterostomes. To uncover the genomic cues that may underlie these specificities, we generated a chromosome-scale genome assembly for the sea urchin and an extensive gene expression and epigenetic profiles of its embryonic development. We found that, unlike vertebrates, sea urchins retained ancestral chromosomal linkages but underwent very fast intrachromosomal gene order mixing. We identified a burst of gene duplication in the echinoid lineage and showed that some of these expanded genes have been recruited in novel structures (water vascular system, Aristotle's lantern, and skeletogenic micromere lineage). Finally, we identified gene-regulatory modules conserved between sea urchins and chordates. Our results suggest that gene-regulatory networks controlling development can be conserved despite extensive gene order rearrangement.

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10112332PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.xgen.2023.100295DOI Listing

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