Topological structures and syntenic conservation in sea anemone genomes

Bob Zimmermann, Juan D. Montenegro, Sofia M. C. Robb, Whitney J. Fropf, Lukas Weilguny, Shuonan He, Shiyuan Chen, Jessica Lovegrove-Walsh, Eric M. Hill, Cheng-Yi Chen, Katerina Ragkousi, Daniela Praher, David Fredman, Darrin Schultz, Yehu Moran, Oleg Simakov, Grigory Genikhovich, Matthew C. Gibson () and Ulrich Technau ()
Additional contact information
Bob Zimmermann: University of Vienna
Juan D. Montenegro: University of Vienna
Sofia M. C. Robb: Stowers Institute for Medical Research
Whitney J. Fropf: Stowers Institute for Medical Research
Lukas Weilguny: University of Vienna
Shuonan He: Stowers Institute for Medical Research
Shiyuan Chen: Stowers Institute for Medical Research
Jessica Lovegrove-Walsh: University of Vienna
Eric M. Hill: Stowers Institute for Medical Research
Cheng-Yi Chen: Stowers Institute for Medical Research
Katerina Ragkousi: Stowers Institute for Medical Research
Daniela Praher: University of Vienna
David Fredman: University of Vienna
Darrin Schultz: University of Vienna
Yehu Moran: University of Vienna
Oleg Simakov: University of Vienna
Grigory Genikhovich: University of Vienna
Matthew C. Gibson: Stowers Institute for Medical Research
Ulrich Technau: University of Vienna

Nature Communications, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: Abstract There is currently little information about the evolution of gene clusters, genome architectures and karyotypes in early branching animals. Slowly evolving anthozoan cnidarians can be particularly informative about the evolution of these genome features. Here we report chromosome-level genome assemblies of two related anthozoans, the sea anemones Nematostella vectensis and Scolanthus callimorphus. We find a robust set of 15 chromosomes with a clear one-to-one correspondence between the two species. Both genomes show chromosomal conservation, allowing us to reconstruct ancestral cnidarian and metazoan chromosomal blocks, consisting of at least 19 and 16 ancestral linkage groups, respectively. We show that, in contrast to Bilateria, the Hox and NK clusters of investigated cnidarians are largely disintegrated, despite the presence of staggered hox/gbx expression in Nematostella. This loss of microsynteny conservation may be facilitated by shorter distances between cis-regulatory sequences and their cognate transcriptional start sites. We find no clear evidence for topologically associated domains, suggesting fundamental differences in long-range gene regulation compared to vertebrates. These data suggest that large sets of ancestral metazoan genes have been retained in ancestral linkage groups of some extant lineages; yet, higher order gene regulation with associated 3D architecture may have evolved only after the cnidarian-bilaterian split.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-44080-7 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:14:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-023-44080-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-44080-7

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().