A cnidarian homologue of an insect gustatory receptor functions in developmental body patterning

Michael Saina, Henriette Busengdal, Chiara Sinigaglia, Libero Petrone, Paola Oliveri (), Fabian Rentzsch () and Richard Benton ()
Additional contact information
Michael Saina: Faculty of Biology and Medicine, Center for Integrative Genomics, University of Lausanne, Genopode Building, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Henriette Busengdal: Sars Centre for Marine Molecular Biology, University of Bergen
Chiara Sinigaglia: Sars Centre for Marine Molecular Biology, University of Bergen
Libero Petrone: Evolution and Environment, and Cell and Developmental Biology, University College London
Paola Oliveri: Evolution and Environment, and Cell and Developmental Biology, University College London
Fabian Rentzsch: Sars Centre for Marine Molecular Biology, University of Bergen
Richard Benton: Faculty of Biology and Medicine, Center for Integrative Genomics, University of Lausanne, Genopode Building, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Insect gustatory and odorant receptors (GRs and ORs) form a superfamily of novel transmembrane proteins, which are expressed in chemosensory neurons that detect environmental stimuli. Here we identify homologues of GRs (Gustatory receptor-like (Grl) genes) in genomes across Protostomia, Deuterostomia and non-Bilateria. Surprisingly, two Grls in the cnidarian Nematostella vectensis, NvecGrl1 and NvecGrl2, are expressed early in development, in the blastula and gastrula, but not at later stages when a putative chemosensory organ forms. NvecGrl1 transcripts are detected around the aboral pole, considered the equivalent to the head-forming region of Bilateria. Morpholino-mediated knockdown of NvecGrl1 causes developmental patterning defects of this region, leading to animals lacking the apical sensory organ. A deuterostome Grl from the sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus displays similar patterns of developmental expression. These results reveal an early evolutionary origin of the insect chemosensory receptor family and raise the possibility that their ancestral role was in embryonic development.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7243 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:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms7243

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

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7243

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 ().