Assembly of the cnidarian camera-type eye from vertebrate-like components.
Animal eyes are morphologically diverse. Their assembly, however, always relies on the same basic principle, i.e., photoreceptors located in the vicinity of dark shielding pigment. Cnidaria as the likely sister group to the Bilateria are the earliest branching phylum with a well developed visual system. Here, we show that camera-type eyes of the cubozoan jellyfish, Tripedalia cystophora, use genetic building blocks typical of vertebrate eyes, namely, a ciliary phototransduction cascade and melanogenic pathway. Our findings indicative of parallelism provide an insight into eye evolution. Combined, the available data favor the possibility that vertebrate and cubozoan eyes arose by independent recruitment of orthologous genes during evolution.
Kozmik
Zbynek
Z
Institute of Molecular Genetics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Videnska 1083, 142 20 Prague 4, Czech Republic. kozmik@img.cas.cz
Ruzickova
Jana
J
Jonasova
Kristyna
K
Matsumoto
Yoshifumi
Y
Vopalensky
Pavel
P
Kozmikova
Iryna
I
Strnad
Hynek
H
Kawamura
Shoji
S
Piatigorsky
Joram
J
Paces
Vaclav
V
Vlcek
Cestmir
C
D000818:Animals; D019556:COS Cells; D002522:Chlorocebus aethiops; D002923:Cilia / Q000378:metabolism / Q000648:ultrastructure; D003459:Crystallins / Q000378:metabolism; D037462:Cubozoa / Q000254:growth & development*; D005123:Eye / Q000166:cytology / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000648:ultrastructure; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D007908:Lens, Crystalline / Q000378:metabolism; D008543:Melanins / Q000378:metabolism; D051739:Microphthalmia-Associated Transcription Factor / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D008954:Models, Biological; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D017956:Photoreceptor Cells, Invertebrate / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism / Q000648:ultrastructure; D010858:Pigmentation; D012333:RNA, Messenger; D017299:Rod Opsins / Q000378:metabolism; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; D014714:Vertebrates / Q000254:growth & development*; D014785:Vision, Ocular / Q000235:genetics
D003459:Crystallins; D008543:Melanins; D051739:Microphthalmia-Associated Transcription Factor; D012333:RNA, Messenger; D017299:Rod Opsins