Resegmentation is an ancestral feature of the gnathostome vertebral skeleton
Publication Date
2020-02-24Journal Title
eLife
Publisher
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
Volume
9
Language
en
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Criswell, K. E., & Gillis, J. A. (2020). Resegmentation is an ancestral feature of the gnathostome vertebral skeleton. eLife, 9 https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.51696
Description
Funder: Marine Biological Laboratory; FundRef: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100006049
Abstract
The vertebral skeleton is a defining feature of vertebrate animals. However, the mode of vertebral segmentation varies considerably between major lineages. In tetrapods, adjacent somite halves recombine to form a single vertebra through the process of ‘resegmentation’. In teleost fishes, there is considerable mixing between cells of the anterior and posterior somite halves, without clear resegmentation. To determine whether resegmentation is a tetrapod novelty, or an ancestral feature of jawed vertebrates, we tested the relationship between somites and vertebrae in a cartilaginous fish, the skate (Leucoraja erinacea). Using cell lineage tracing, we show that skate trunk vertebrae arise through tetrapod-like resegmentation, with anterior and posterior halves of each vertebra deriving from adjacent somites. We further show that tail vertebrae also arise through resegmentation, though with a duplication of the number of vertebrae per body segment. These findings resolve axial resegmentation as an ancestral feature of the jawed vertebrate body plan.
Keywords
Research Article, Developmental Biology, Evolutionary Biology, somites, vertebrae, axial skeleton, chondrichthyan, segmentation, evolution, Other
Sponsorship
Royal Society (NF160762)
Royal Society (UF130182)
Identifiers
51696
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.51696
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/303288
Rights
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Licence URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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