Équipe : Transcriptional control of chordate morphogenesis
Responsable : Patrick Lemaire
Laboratoire : UMR 5237 Centre de Recherche en Biologie cellulaire de Montpellier (Montpellier)
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Descriptif :
Keywords: developmental biology, transcription, imaging, variability, evolution. Biologists have long been puzzled by the different rates of morphological evolution of animal species. Why do some taxa undergo rapid morphological changes while others, such as the coelacanth, can maintain almost the same morphology over hundreds of millions of years? Is this correlated with the rate of genome divergence, or does this involve specific mechanisms to buffer or enhance the effect of genetic divergence? Our group investigates the complex relationships between genotype and phenotype at the crossroad of developmental biology, computational biology, evolutionary biology, physics and cell biology. As a model system we use ascidian embryos because of the anatomical and genomic simplicity of these marine invertebrates that are closely related to vertebrates (Left). These embryos develop with fixed cell lineages that are remarkably well conserved in all studied species, even in those with genomes that have extensively diverged during 500 million years of parallel evolution. Therefore, ascidians offer a unique opportunity to decipher a chordate developmental programme with a cellular level of resolution, and to understand how genomic plasticity is compatible with morphological conservation. This latter phenomenon is referred to as Developmental Systems Divergence (DSD) and may explain why human disease modelling in animal models is not always successful. To identify the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the striking evolutionary stability of ascidian morphogenesis, we combine advanced quantitative imaging with epigenetic, biophysical transcriptomic and cis-regulatory analyses. Our main research aims are: 1) to elucidate the evolution of the repertoire and function of proteins that regulate ascidian development; 2) to quantify ascidian morphogenesis and its evolution by using advanced light-sheet microscopy and computational image analysis.
Keywords: developmental biology, transcription, imaging, variability, evolution. Biologists have long been puzzled by the different rates of morphological evolution of animal species. Why do some taxa undergo rapid morphological changes while others, such as the coelacanth, can maintain almost the same morphology over hundreds of millions of years? Is this correlated with the rate of genome divergence, or does this involve specific mechanisms to buffer or enhance the effect of genetic divergence? Our group investigates the complex relationships between genotype and phenotype at the crossroad of developmental biology, computational biology, evolutionary biology, physics and cell biology. As a model system we use ascidian embryos because of the anatomical and genomic simplicity of these marine invertebrates that are closely related to vertebrates (Left). These embryos develop with fixed cell lineages that are remarkably well conserved in all studied species, even in those with genomes that have extensively diverged during 500 million years of parallel evolution. Therefore, ascidians offer a unique opportunity to decipher a chordate developmental programme with a cellular level of resolution, and to understand how genomic plasticity is compatible with morphological conservation. This latter phenomenon is referred to as Developmental Systems Divergence (DSD) and may explain why human disease modelling in animal models is not always successful. To identify the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the striking evolutionary stability of ascidian morphogenesis, we combine advanced quantitative imaging with epigenetic, biophysical transcriptomic and cis-regulatory analyses. Our main research aims are: 1) to elucidate the evolution of the repertoire and function of proteins that regulate ascidian development; 2) to quantify ascidian morphogenesis and its evolution by using advanced light-sheet microscopy and computational image analysis.
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