The Amphimedon queenslandica genome and the evolution of animal complexity

By M. Srivastava, O. Simakov, Jarrod Chapman, B. Fahey, Marie E. A. Gauthier, T. Mitros, G. Richards, C. Conaco, Michael Dacre, U. Hellsten and 23 more. Nature, 2010

1,023 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Sponges are an ancient group of animals that diverged from other metazoans over 600 million years ago. Here we present the draft genome sequence of Amphimedon queenslandica, a demosponge from the Great Barrier Reef, and show that it is remarkably similar to other animal genomes in content, structure and organization. Comparative analysis enabled by the sequencing of the sponge genome reveals genomic events linked to the origin and early evolution of animals, including the appearance, expansion and diversification of pan-metazoan transcription factor, signalling pathway and structural genes. This diverse ‘toolkit’ of genes correlates with critical aspects of all metazoan body plans, and comprises cell cycle control and growth, development, somatic- and germ-cell specification, cell adhesion, innate immunity and allorecognition. Notably, many of the genes associated with the emergence of animals are also implicated in cancer, which arises from defects in basic processes associated with metazoan multicellularity.

Subfields: Genetics, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c40c8376e81b11bf8f3e7d04f22db8b3568f06e7

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Citations in the corpus

Structural and functional diversity of cadherin at the adherens junction (2011, background): “Amphimedon queenslandica, belonging to another group, the Demospongiae, was the first sponge species to have its genome sequenced (Srivastava et al., 2010).”
Animal Phylogeny and Its Evolutionary Implications (2014, background): “Porifera (Srivastava et al. 2010) and Placozoa (Srivastava et al. 2008) have one sequenced genome apiece.”
Mechanisms and functions of Hedgehog signalling across the metazoa (2011, background): “Genes encoding GLI proteins are found in the most primitive metazoa, the sponge”
The Weng'an biota and the Ediacaran radiation of multicellular eukaryotes (2014, background): “likely a stem-group metazoan [51], although it is not entirely clear whether living sponges have (or the earliest animals had) true gastrulation and epithelia [153-155].”
Inflammation meets cancer, with NF-κB as the matchmaker (2011, background): “Thus, the main classes of pathogen sensors, Nod-like receptors and Toll-like receptors (TLRs) and interleukin 1 (IL-1) receptors, as well as the signal transducers and amplifiers IRAK, MyD88, TRAF and IKK and the transcriptional regulator Rel (NF-κB), are present even in the most primitive metazoans”
Homeodomain proteins: an update (2015, background): “A closely related family, LMO (aka rhombotin), encodes only two LIM domains, possibly having lost the HD secondarily (Boehm et al. 1991; Srivastava et al. 2010a).”