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Ambulacrarian prototypical Hox and ParaHox gene complements of the indirect-developing hemichordate Balanoglossus simodensis

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Abstract

The Hox genes and its evolutionary sister, the ParaHox genes, are widely distributed among animals. Although it has been expected that hemichordates and echinoderms have a single set of Hox genes and most likely a single set of ParaHox genes, it is not known whether the ortholog of Hox8 is absent in hemichordates, and in turn, consensus view about Hox/ParaHox gene complements in hemichordates has not been established. In this study, we isolated either complete or nearly complete coding sequences of 12 Hox genes, including the ortholog of the Hox8 that has not been reported in the previous studies, and three ParaHox genes from the recently discovered indirect-developing acorn worm, Balanoglossus simodensis. Our data suggest that the ancestral hemichordate had intact complements of ambulacrarian prototypical Hox and ParaHox genes, consisting of 12 and three members, respectively.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by KAKENHI (Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research) on Priority Areas “Comparative Genomics” from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (17018018) to N. S. and H. S., and Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) from JSPS (18370088) to H. S.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Hachiohji, Tokyo, 192-0397, Japan

    Tetsuro Ikuta & Hidetoshi Saiga

  2. Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8572, Japan

    Norio Miyamoto & Hiroshi Wada

  3. Shimoda Marine Research Centre, University of Tsukuba, Shimoda, Shizuoka, 415-0025, Japan

    Yasunori Saito

  4. Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, 12-22 Suzaki, Uruma, Okinawa, 904-2234, Japan

    Nori Satoh

Authors
  1. Tetsuro Ikuta
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  2. Norio Miyamoto
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  3. Yasunori Saito
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  4. Hiroshi Wada
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  5. Nori Satoh
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  6. Hidetoshi Saiga
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hidetoshi Saiga.

Additional information

Communicated by H. Nishida

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Supplemental Fig. 1

Maximum likelihood tree constructed from the homeodomain and hexapeptide motif sequences of medial Hox genes. The BsimHox genes are indicated by black dots. The bootstrap values (100 replicates) are shown at the branches. The scale bar indicates 0.05 amino acid substitutions per position in the sequence. Taxonomic abbreviations: Sk Saccoglossus kowalevskii, Mm Mus musculus, Mr Metacrinus rotundus, Pf Ptychodera flava, Sp Strongylocentrotus purpuratus

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Ikuta, T., Miyamoto, N., Saito, Y. et al. Ambulacrarian prototypical Hox and ParaHox gene complements of the indirect-developing hemichordate Balanoglossus simodensis . Dev Genes Evol 219, 383–389 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00427-009-0298-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00427-009-0298-4

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