Cnidarians and ancestral genetic complexity in the animal kingdom
Journal Publication ResearchOnline@JCUMiller, David J.;Ball, Eldon E.;Technau, Ulrich
Abstract
Eleven of the twelve recognized wingless (Wnt) subfamilies are represented in the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis, indicating that this developmentally important gene family was already fully diversified in the common ancestor of ‘higher’ animals. In deuterostomes, although duplications have occurred, no novel subfamilies of Wnts have evolved. By contrast, the protostomes Drosophila and Caenorhabditis have lost half of the ancestral Wnts. This pattern – loss of genes from an ancestrally complex state – might be more important in animal evolution than previously recognized.
Journal
Trends in Genetics
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Volume
21
ISBN/ISSN
1362-4555
Edition
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Issue
10
Pages Count
4
Location
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Publisher
Elsevier
Publisher Url
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Publisher Location
N/A
Publish Date
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Url
N/A
Date
N/A
EISSN
N/A
DOI
10.1016/j.tig.2005.08.002