RESEARCH ARTICLE Conservation of peripheral nervous system formation mechanisms in divergent ascidian embryos Joshua F Coulcher1†, Agne` s Roure1†, Rafath Chowdhury1, Me´ ryl Robert1, Laury Lescat1‡, Aure´ lie Bouin1§, Juliana Carvajal Cadavid1, Hiroki Nishida2, Se´ bastien Darras1* 1Sorbonne Universite´, CNRS, Biologie Inte´grative des Organismes Marins (BIOM), Banyuls-sur-Mer, France; 2Department of Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Science, Osaka University, Toyonaka, Japan Abstract Ascidians with very similar embryos but highly divergent genomes are thought to have undergone extensive developmental system drift. We compared, in four species (Ciona and Phallusia for Phlebobranchia, Molgula and Halocynthia for Stolidobranchia), gene expression and gene regulation for a network of six transcription factors regulating peripheral nervous system *For correspondence: (PNS) formation in Ciona. All genes, but one in Molgula, were expressed in the PNS with some
[email protected] differences correlating with phylogenetic distance. Cross-species transgenesis indicated strong † These authors contributed levels of conservation, except in Molgula, in gene regulation despite lack of sequence conservation equally to this work of the enhancers. Developmental system drift in ascidians is thus higher for gene regulation than Present address: ‡Department for gene expression and is impacted not only by phylogenetic distance, but also in a clade-specific of Developmental and Molecular manner and unevenly within a network. Finally, considering that Molgula is divergent in our Biology, Albert Einstein College analyses, this suggests deep conservation of developmental mechanisms in ascidians after 390 My of Medicine, New York, United of separate evolution. States; §Toulouse Biotechnology Institute, Universite´de Toulouse, CNRS, INRAE, INSA, Toulouse, France Competing interests: The Introduction authors declare that no The formation of an animal during embryonic development is controlled by the exquisitely precise competing interests exist.