Forgot Password

If you have forgotten your password you can enter your email here and get a temporary password sent to your email.

Forgot Password

If you have forgotten your password you can enter your email here and get a temporary password sent to your email.

Publication

The Ancient Origins of Neural Substrates for Land Walking.

Cell | 2018

Walking is the predominant locomotor behavior expressed by land-dwelling vertebrates, but it is unknown when the neural circuits that are essential for limb control first appeared. Certain fish species display walking-like behaviors, raising the possibility that the underlying circuitry originated in primitive marine vertebrates. We show that the neural substrates of bipedalism are present in the little skate Leucoraja erinacea, whose common ancestor with tetrapods existed ∼420 million years ago. Leucoraja exhibits core features of tetrapod locomotor gaits, including left-right alternation and reciprocal extension-flexion of the pelvic fins. Leucoraja also deploys a remarkably conserved Hox transcription factor-dependent program that is essential for selective innervation of fin/limb muscle. This network encodes peripheral connectivity modules that are distinct from those used in axial muscle-based swimming and has apparently been diminished in most modern fish. These findings indicate that the circuits that are essential for walking evolved through adaptation of a genetic regulatory network shared by all vertebrates with paired appendages. VIDEO ABSTRACT.

Pubmed ID: 29425489 RIS Download

Research resources used in this publication

None found

Additional research tools detected in this publication

Antibodies used in this publication

Associated grants

Agency: NINDS NIH HHS, United States
Id: R01 NS062822
Agency: NINDS NIH HHS, United States
Id: R21 NS099933
Agency: NIMH NIH HHS, United States
Id: T32 MH096331
Agency: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, United States

Publication data is provided by the National Library of Medicine ® and PubMed ®. Data is retrieved from PubMed ® on a weekly schedule. For terms and conditions see the National Library of Medicine Terms and Conditions.

This is a list of tools and resources that we have found mentioned in this publication.

SkateBase (tool)

RRID:SCR_005302

Portal supporting the North East Bioinformatics Collaborative''s project to sequence the genome of the Little Skate. Provided is a clearinghouse for Little Skate Genome Project and other publicly available Skate and Ray (Batoidea) genome data, and tools for data visualization and analysis. Little Skate Genome Project The little skate (Leucoraja erinacea) is a chondrichthyan (cartilaginous) fish native to the east coast of North America. Elasmobranchs (Skates, Rays, and Sharks) exhibit many fundamental vertebrate characteristics, including a neural crest, jaws and teeth, an adaptive immune system, and a pressurized circulatory system. These characteristics have been exploited to promote understanding about human physiology, immunology, stem cell biology, toxicology, neurobiology and regeneration. The development of standardized experimental protocols in elasmobranchs such as L. erinacea and the spiny dogfish shark (Squalus acanthias) has further positioned these organisms as important biomedical and developmental models. Despite this distinction, the only reported chondrichthyan genome is the low coverage (1.4x) draft genome of the elephant shark (Callorhinchus milii). To close the evolutionary gaps in available elasmobranch genome sequence data, and generate critical genomic resources for future biomedical study, the genome of L. erinacea is being sequenced by the North East Bioinformatics Collaborative (NEBC). As close evolutionary relatives, the little skate sequence will facilitate studies that employ dogfish shark and other elasmobranchs as model organisms. Skate tools include the SkateBLAST and the Skate Genome Browsers: Little Skate Mitochondrion, Thorny Skate Mitochondrion, and Ocellate Spot Skate Mitochondrion.

View all literature mentions

Trimmomatic (tool)

RRID:SCR_011848

Software Java pipeline for trimming tasks for Illumina paired end and single ended data. Flexible Trimmer for Illumina Sequence Data. Pair aware preprocessing tool optimized for Illumina next generation sequencing data. Includes several processing steps for read trimming and filtering. Operating systems Unix/Linux, Mac OS, Windows.

View all literature mentions

edgeR (tool)

RRID:SCR_012802

Bioconductor software package for Empirical analysis of Digital Gene Expression data in R. Used for differential expression analysis of RNA-seq and digital gene expression data with biological replication.

View all literature mentions