2008/06/24 by Zbyněk Kozmík, Jana Růžičková, Kristyna Jonasova +8 · 2 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Neuroscience · #Marine Invertebrate Physiology and Ecology #Marine Ecology and Invasive Species #Protist diversity and phylogeny #Bilateria #Biology #Vertebrate #Visual phototransduction #Evolutionary biology #Jellyfish #Phylum #Sister group #Anatomy #Genetics #Phylogenetics #Gene #Neuroscience #Retina #Clade #Ecology
paper · doi:10.1073/pnas.0800388105
openalex publication_date 2008/06/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
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.