2015/01/27 by Hajk‐Georg Drost, Alexander Gabel, Ivo Große +1 · 1 citation
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Plant Molecular Biology Research #Photosynthetic Processes and Mechanisms #Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies #Hourglass #Biology #Danio #Evolutionary biology #Extant taxon #Transcriptome #Function (biology) #Drosophila melanogaster #Arabidopsis thaliana #Zebrafish #Genetics #Gene
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/molbev/msv012
openalex publication_date 2015/01/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
The developmental hourglass model has been used to describe the morphological transitions of related species throughout embryogenesis. Recently, quantifiable approaches combining transcriptomic and evolutionary information provided novel evidence for the presence of a phylotranscriptomic hourglass pattern across kingdoms. As its biological function is unknown it remains speculative whether this pattern is functional or merely represents a nonfunctional evolutionary relic. The latter would seriously hamper future experimental approaches designed to test hypotheses regarding its function. Here, we address this question by generating transcriptome divergence index (TDI) profiles across embryogenesis of Danio rerio, Drosophila melanogaster, and Arabidopsis thaliana. To enable meaningful evaluation of the resulting patterns, we develop a statistical test that specifically assesses potential hourglass patterns. Based on this objective measure we find that two of these profiles follow a statistically significant hourglass pattern with the most conserved transcriptomes in the phylotypic periods. As the TDI considers only recent evolutionary signals, this indicates that the phylotranscriptomic hourglass pattern is not a rudiment but possibly actively maintained, implicating the existence of some linked biological function associated with embryogenesis in extant species.