Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Vanni, Virginia
• Salonna, Marika
• Gasparini, Fabio
• Martini, Margherita
• Anselmi, Chiara
• Gissi, Carmela
• Manni, Lucia

Titel

Yamanaka Factors in the Budding Tunicate Botryllus schlosseri Show a Shared Spatio-Temporal Expression Pattern in Chordates

Ist Teil von

• Frontiers in cell and developmental biology, 2022-03, Vol.10, p.782722-782722

Ort / Verlag

Switzerland: Frontiers Media S.A

Erscheinungsjahr

2022

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

EZB Electronic Journals Library

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In vertebrates, the four transcription factors , , and are involved in the differentiation of several tissues during vertebrate embryogenesis; moreover, they are normally co-expressed in embryonic stem cells and play roles in pluripotency, self-renewal, and maintenance of the undifferentiated state in adult cells. The forced co-expression of these factors, named Yamanaka factors (YFs), induces pluripotency in human or mouse fibroblasts. is a colonial tunicate undergoing continuous stem cell-mediated asexual development, providing a valuable model system for the study of pluripotency in the closest living relatives of vertebrates. In this study, we identified orthologs of human and genes as well as the closest homologs of the vertebrate-specific gene, through an in-depth evolutionary analysis of the YF gene families in tunicates and other deuterostomes. Then, we studied the expression of these genes during the asexual cycle of using hybridization in order to investigate their possible involvement in tissue differentiation and in pluripotency maintenance. Our results show a shared spatio-temporal expression pattern consistent with the reported functions of these genes in invertebrate and vertebrate embryogenesis. Moreover, , and were expressed in candidate stem cells residing in their niches, while was found expressed exclusively in the immature previtellogenic oocytes, both in gonads and circulating in the colonial vascular system. Our data suggest that , and may be individually involved in the differentiation of the same territories seen in other chordates, and that, together, they may play a role in stemness even in this colonial ascidian.