Tunicate Neurogenesis: The Case of the SoxB2 Missing CNE

Evgeniya Anishchenko and Salvatore D’Aniello ()
Additional contact information
Evgeniya Anishchenko: Stazione Zoologica Anton Dorhn, Department of Biology and Evolution of Marine Organisms (BEOM)
Salvatore D’Aniello: Stazione Zoologica Anton Dorhn, Department of Biology and Evolution of Marine Organisms (BEOM)

A chapter in Mathematical Models in Biology, 2015, pp 99-108 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The discovery of the SoxB2/Sox21 regulatory element, conserved from basal metazoa to human, opened novel perspectives to study the conservation among distant related genomes. This discovery represents exceptional maintenance of an almost identical enhancer structure controlling a gene that is fundamental for nervous system development. The activity of metazoan SoxB2 enhancers was previously demonstrated in zebrafish embryos by cross-species experiments. Here we tested the activity of human and amphioxus orthologue cis-regulatory sequences in embryos of the tunicate Ciona intestinalis through a transgenic approach, and found out that SoxB2 enhancers retained their activity in neuronal differentiation even in a non-vertebrate chordate. This result was unexpected since the conserved SoxB2 enhancer was not found in Ciona in previous studies. Nevertheless, we adopted a different comparative approach and performed a phylogenetic footprinting analysis using two congeneric tunicate species, C. intestinalis and Ciona savignyi, that, in fact, evidenced a conserved SoxB2 3′ element. The discovered element could potentially be the missing orthologous SoxB2 enhancer previously identified in human, zebrafish, and amphioxus. A detailed search for possible transcription factors revealed the massive presence of Sox, Pou and Fox binding sites as found in other deuterostomes. Nevertheless, whether the conserved SoxB2 element of Ciona possesses a functional ability as gene transcriptional enhancer remains to be demonstrated experimentally.

Keywords: Evolution; Transgenesis; Nervous system; Ciona; Cis-regulatory enhancers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:sprchp:978-3-319-23497-7_7

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783319234977

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-23497-7_7

Access Statistics for this chapter

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