Filastereans and Ichthyosporeans: Models to Understand the Origin of Metazoan Multicellularity

摘要: The origin of animals or metazoans from their unicellular ancestors is one the most important evolutionary transitions in history life. To decipher molecular mechanisms involved this transition, it crucial to understand both early evolution and prehistory. Recent phylogenomic analyses have shown that there are at least three distinct colonial lineages closely related metazoans: choanoflagellates, ichthyosporeans filastereans. However, until recently, choanoflagellates had been only lineage for which an entire genome sequence was available. Moreover, lack transgenesis tools any these precluded possibility performing functional analyses. better prehistory animals, we recently obtained sequences filastereans ichthyosporeans. Analyses genomes identified many genes metazoan multicellularity development, some absent choanoflagellate thus were thought be metazoan-specific. We also established methods gene silencing combination genomic information facilitate efficient how key co-opted during unicellular-tomulticellular transition gave rise metazoans. propose ideal model organisms investigating multicellularity.