title: The premetazoan ancestry of cadherins.
abstract: Cadherin-mediated cell adhesion and signaling is essential for metazoan development and yet is absent from all other multicellular organisms. We found cadherin genes at numbers similar to those observed in complex metazoans in one of the closest single-celled relatives of metazoans, the choanoflagellate Monosiga brevicollis. Because the evolution of metazoans from a single-celled ancestor required novel cell adhesion and signaling mechanisms, the discovery of diverse cadherins in choanoflagellates suggests that cadherins may have contributed to metazoan origins.
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and Center for Integrative Genomics, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Monika
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Abedin
authors.forename: Nicole
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: King
mesh_terms: D008841:Actin Cytoskeleton / Q000378:metabolism; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D005075:Biological Evolution; D015820:Cadherins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics* / Q000502:physiology; D002448:Cell Adhesion; D002938:Ciona intestinalis / Q000737:chemistry; D003063:Cnidaria / Q000737:chemistry; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000737:chemistry; D056890:Eukaryota / Q000737:chemistry*; D005057:Eukaryotic Cells / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000502:physiology; D051379:Mice; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D017434:Protein Structure, Tertiary; D020449:Repetitive Sequences, Amino Acid; D015398:Signal Transduction; D014443:Tyrosine / Q000378:metabolism; D018909:src Homology Domains
chemical_list: D015820:Cadherins; D014443:Tyrosine