Biology subjects

Sanchez-Serna, G.

Publications and source records attributed to Sanchez-Serna, G..

5 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Downstream effects of the ''Less, but More'' Fgf signaling in Oikopleura dioica: Fgf receptor expansion and RTK pathway simplification.

Fibroblast growth factor (FGF) signaling is central to chordate development and has been extensively remodeled in tunicates. Recent findings show that appendicularians have massively lost all ancestral chordate Fgf subfamilies except two, the Fgf9/16/20 and Fgf11/12/13/14 subfamilies, which in contrast have undergone a burst of lineage-specific duplications and diversification into novel paralogs, in an evolutionary scenario that we have named "Less, but More". Here, we investigate the downstream effects of the Fgf losses and duplications ion Fgf receptors (FgfRs) and intracellular RTK components in the appendicularian Oikopleura dioica. We show that the single ancestral FgfR gene has expanded into three paralogs (FgfRa-c), which are conserved across cryptic O. dioica species, yet highly divergent from other chordates. Despite strong sequence divergence, structural modeling indicates preservation of canonical FgfR architecture. Expression analyses reveal distinct spatiotemporal patterns: FgfRa and FgfRb are maternally supplied and enriched in mesodermal derivatives, whereas FgfRc is restricted to neural and epithelial tissues. Genome surveys of downstream RTK pathways show conservation of core RAS/MAPK, PLC{gamma}/PKC, and PI3K/AKT cascades, but with losses of classical Ras genes and several adaptors, suggesting a lineage-specific simplification of transduction complexes. Transduction gene expression shifts from broad maternal ubiquity to tissue-specific domains, particularly in brain, notochord, muscle, and gonadal primordia throughout embryonic and larval development. Appendicularians appear as the only non-vertebrate chordate lineage that recapitulate the vertebrate-like FgfR expansion following Fgf ligands diversification. Downstream components, however, evolved more conservatively, tending toward simplification, reinforcing the view that appendicularians generate signaling innovation despite extensive gene loss.

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2025

Evolution of Tunicate lifestyles shaped by Myosin heavy chain gene duplications, losses, and the diversification of tail muscle cell identities in Oikopleura dioica

Tunicates offer a suitable system to study the evolutionary mechanisms underlying lifestyle transitions, ranging from the biphasic lifestyle of ascidians alternating swimming larva with sessile adults, to the fully free-swimming appendicularians. The appendicularian Oikopleura dioica, despite having only ten pairs of tail muscle cells, roughly half than in ascidian larvae, exhibits a remarkably rich repertoire of behaviours required for house inflation, swimming, nodding, and the rhythmic water pumping through the house. This apparent paradox suggests that functional diversification might have arose not from increased cell number, but from molecular specialization within a minimal musculature. To address this question, here, we reconstruct the evolution of the Myosin class II heavy-chain (Myh) gene family across tunicates and generated a developmental expression atlas of all O. dioica Myh genes. Phylogenetic analysis reveals that the cardio-paraxial Myh subfamily duplicated into two tunicate-specific subfamilies, followed by independent bursts of paralogue duplications in ascidians and appendicularians. In O. dioica, two distinct Myh-Scp-Tb paralogs show cardiac expression, and surprisingly, combinations of different Myh-Scp-Tb paralogues define multiple muscle cell identities along the tail. The innovation of this anteroposterior muscle regionalization associated to the Myh-Scp-Tb expansion provides a plausible mechanism for fine-scale modulation of contractile properties within a minimal musculature, helping to resolve the paradox of "fewer cells, but more contractile properties" in appendicularian tail movements. Conversely, the loss of the Myh-Sj/bw gene, which in ascidians is expressed with post-metamorphic body-wall and siphon muscles, is consistent with a pattern of regressive evolution associated to the absence of trunk muscles in O. dioica. This finding supports the view that the appendicularian lifestyle is a secondary derived condition, and that the last common ancestor of tunicates likely possessed an ascidian-like biphasic lifestyle. Together, our findings indicate that both gene-family duplication and gene loss have shaped the evolution of appendicularian tail muscle, enabling the emergence of complex tail-driven behaviours, and offering new insights into the ancestral lifestyle of tunicates.

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2024

Less, but more: new insights from appendicularians on chordate Fgf evolution and the divergence of tunicate lifestyles.

The impact of gene loss on the divergence of taxa and the generation of evolutionary innovations is a fundamental aspect of Evolutionary Biology that remains unclear. Here, using the evolution of the Fibroblast Growth Factors (FGFs) in appendicularians as a case study, we investigate how gene losses have influenced the evolution of chordates, especially the divergence among tunicates. Our work reveals an unprecedented case of massive losses of all Fgf gene subfamilies, except for the Fgf9/16/20 and Fgf11/12/13/14, which in turn suffered two bursts of gene duplications. Phylogenetic inferences and genomic analyses of gene synteny conservation, gene architecture, alternative splicing and protein 3D-structure have allowed us to reconstruct the history of appendicularian Fgf genes in the context of chordate evolution, providing compelling evidence supporting the paracrine secreting functions and the intracellular functions of the Fgf9/16/20 and Fgf11/12/13/14 subfamilies, respectively. Exhaustive analysis of developmental Fgf expression in Oikopleura dioica as a model for appendicularians reveals a paradigmatic case of what could be referred as "less, but more", providing a conceptual evolutionary framework characterized by four associated evolutionary patterns: conservation of ancestral Fgf expression domains; function shuffling between paralogs upon gene loss; innovation of new expression domains after the bursts of Fgf duplications; and the extinction of Fgf functions linked to gene losses. The findings of this work allow us to formulate novel hypotheses about the potential impact of losses and duplications of Fgf genes on the transition from an ancestral ascidian-like biphasic lifestyle to a fully free-living style of appendicularians. These hypotheses include the massive co-option of Fgf genes for the patterning of the oikoblast responsible of the house architecture, and for the development of the tail fin; the recruitment of Fgf11/12/13/14 genes into the evolution of a new mouth, and their role modulating neuronal excitability; the evolutionary innovation of an "anterior tail" FGF signaling mesodermal source upon the loss of retinoic acid signaling; and the potential link between the loss of Fgf7/10/22 and Fgf8/17/18 and the loss of drastic metamorphosis, mesenchymal cells and lack of tail absorption in appendicularians, in contrast to ascidians.

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2023

Extreme genome scrambling in cryptic Oikopleura dioica species

Genes are not randomly distributed throughout chromosomes. How gene order evolves and how selective constraints act to preserve or vary gene order, both at the macrosyntenic level of whole chromosomes or microsyntenic level of gene blocks, are central questions of evolutionary biology and genomics that remain largely unsolved. Here, after sequencing several genomes of the appendicularian tunicate Oikopleura dioica from different locations around the globe, we show an unprecedented amount of genome scrambling in animals with no obvious morphological differences, consistent with cryptic speciation. Our assemblies suggest that all members of this clade possess a common 3-chromosome karyotype, and that different species largely preserve gene content, despite the presence of thousands of rearrangements in gene order. The movements of genes are largely restricted to chromosome arms and sex-specific regions, which appear to be the primary unit of macrosynteny conservation, and examples of these within-arm movements can be seen in the Hox and Fgf gene families. Our approach employing whole-genome alignments demonstrates that segments containing protein-coding elements tend to be preserved at the microsyntenic scale, consistent with strong purifying selection, with appreciably less preservation of non-coding elements. Unexpectedly, scrambling did not preserve operon structure across species, suggesting an absence of selective pressure to maintain operon structure. As well, genome scrambling does not occur uniformly across all chromosomes, as short chromosome arms possess shorter genes, smaller operons, more breakpoints, and elevated dN/dS values compared to long chromosome arms. Estimation of divergence times among the cryptic O. dioica lineages yielded an estimated breakpoint accumulation rate of 6 to 25 breakpoints per megabase per million years, which is an order of magnitude higher than the rates for other ascidian tunicates or Drosophila species. Therefore, O. dioica appears to be an attractive animal system to unravel the mechanisms that underlie gene order and synteny conservation, as well as exploring the limits of genome scrambling without an apparent impact on phenotypic evolution.

genomics↗

bioRxiv2021

Cardiopharyngeal deconstruction and ancestral tunicate sessility

A key problem in understanding chordate evolution has been the origin of sessility of ascidians, and whether the appendicularian free-living style represents a primitive or derived condition of tunicates. To address this problem, we performed comprehensive developmental and genomic comparative analyses of the cardiopharyngeal gene regulatory network (GRN) between appendicularians and ascidians. Our results reveal that the cardiopharyngeal GRN has suffered a process of evolutionary deconstruction with massive ancestral losses of genes (Mesp, Ets1/2, Gata4/5/6, Mek1/2, Tbx1/10, and RA- and FGF-signaling related genes) and subfunctions (e.g. FoxF, Islet, Ebf, Mrf, Dach and Bmp signaling). These losses have led to the deconstruction of two modules of the cardiopharyngeal GRN that in ascidians are related to early and late multipotent state cells involved in lineage fate determination towards first and secondary heart fields, and siphon muscle. Our results allow us to propose an evolutionary scenario, in which the evolutionary deconstruction of the cardiopharyngeal GRN has had an adaptive impact on the acceleration of the developmental cardiac program, the redesign of the cardiac architecture into an open-wide laminar structure, and the loss of pharyngeal muscle. Our findings, therefore, provide evidence supporting that the ancestral tunicate had a sessile ascidian-like lifestyle, and points to the deconstruction of the cardiopharyngeal GRN in appendicularians as a key event that facilitated the evolution of their pelagic free-living style connected to the innovation of the house.

evolutionary biology↗