Project description:Evolution of the capacity to form secondary outgrowths from the principal embryonic axes was a crucial innovation that potentiated the diversification of animal body plans. Nevertheless, precisely how such outgrowths develop in early-branching metazoan species remains poorly understood. To identify genes potentially involved in tentacle initiation, outgrowth, and maintenance, we performed transcriptional profiling at three different stages of Nematostella development: late planula larvae with tentacle buds, animals with growing tentacles, and mature animals with four-tentacle polyps. At each of these three stages, the animal was bisected such that the oral tentacle portion (head) could be compared to the body column.
Project description:Evolution of the capacity to form secondary outgrowths from the principal embryonic axes was a crucial innovation that potentiated the diversification of animal body plans. Nevertheless, precisely how such outgrowths develop in early-branching metazoan species remains poorly understood. To identify genes potentially involved in tentacle initiation, outgrowth, and maintenance, we performed transcriptional profiling at three different stages of Nematostella development: late planula larvae with tentacle buds, animals with growing tentacles, and mature animals with four-tentacle polyps. At each of these three stages, the animal was bisected such that the oral tentacle portion (head) could be compared to the body column. Tentacle buds, growing tentacles, and mature tentacles, were compared to body columns from each matching stage in duplicate, for a total of 6 samples.
