Developmental evidence for serial homology of the vertebrate jaw and gill arch skeleton.

ABSTRACT: Gegenbaur's classical hypothesis of jaw-gill arch serial homology is widely cited, but remains unsupported by either palaeontological evidence (for example, a series of fossils reflecting the stepwise transformation of a gill arch into a jaw) or developmental genetic data (for example, shared molecular mechanisms underlying segment identity in the mandibular, hyoid and gill arch endoskeletons). Here we show that nested expression of Dlx genes--the 'Dlx code' that specifies upper and lower jaw identity in mammals and teleosts--is a primitive feature of the mandibular, hyoid and gill arches of jawed vertebrates. Using fate-mapping techniques, we demonstrate that the principal dorsal and ventral endoskeletal segments of the jaw, hyoid and gill arches of the skate Leucoraja erinacea derive fro

SUBMITTER: Gillis JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3600657 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature