Back

Embryonic expression patterns of panarthropod Teneurin-m/odd Oz genes suggest a possible function in segmentation

Janssen, R.

2019-09-09 evolutionary biology
10.1101/762971 bioRxiv
Show abstract

BackgroundA hallmark of arthropods is their segmented body, and the so-called Drosophila segmentation gene cascade that controls this process serves as one of the best-studied gene regulatory networks. An important group of segmentation genes is represented by the pair-rule genes (PRGs). One of these genes was thought to be the type-II transmembrane protein encoding gene Tenascin-m (Ten-m (aka odd Oz)). Ten-m, however, does not have a pair-rule function in Drosophila, despite its characteristic PRG-like expression pattern. A recent study in the beetle Tribolium castaneum showed that its Ten-m gene is not expressed like a segmentation gene, and hence is very unlikely to have a function in segmentation.\n\nResultsIn this study, I present data from a range of arthropods covering the arthropod tree of life, and an onychophoran, representing a closely related group of segmented animals. At least one ortholog of Ten-m/odz in each of these species is expressed in the form of transverse segmental stripes in the ectoderm of forming and newly formed segments - a characteristic of genes involved in segmentation.\n\nConclusionsThe new expression data support the idea that Ten-m orthologs after all may be involved in panarthropod segmentation.

Matching journals

The top 7 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.