TY - JOUR
T1 - Developmental system drift in dorsoventral patterning is linked to transitions to autonomous development in Annelida
AU - Carrillo-Baltodano, Allan M.
AU - Haillot, Emmanuel
AU - Mutiara Meha, Steffanie
AU - Luqman, Imran
AU - Pashaj, Artenis
AU - Montagne, Jimena
AU - Lee, Yun-Ju
AU - Lu, Tsai-Ming
AU - Ferrier, David E. K.
AU - Schneider, Stephan Q.
AU - Martin-Duran, José M.
N1 - Funding: This study was funded by the European Research Council (Starting Grant, Action number 801669) to JMMD, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council LIDo Summer Research Placement to AMCB, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/Y004221/1 and BB/Y004868/1) to AMCB, DEKF and JMMD, and by the National Science Foundation, USA (NSF IOS-1455185), National Science and Technology Council, R.O.C. (MOST 108-2311-B-001-002-MY3), and Academia Sinica (AS-CDA-110-L02 & intramural funds) to SQS. We thank the Oxford Genomics Centre at the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics (funded by Wellcome Trust grant reference 203141/A/16/Z) for generating and initially processing the sequencing data. This research utilised Queen Mary’s Apocrita HPC facility, supported by QMUL Research-IT, and the confocal microscope supported by BBSRC grant BB/W019698/1.
PY - 2026/4/18
Y1 - 2026/4/18
N2 - The Bone Morphogenetic Protein (BMP) pathway is the ancestral signalling system patterning the dorsoventral axis in bilaterally symmetrical animals. However, in Spiralia, a large bilaterian clade including molluscs and annelids, BMP’s axial function varies across species, obscuring the ancestral developmental role of this pathway. Here, we study four annelid species to demonstrate that BMP is ancestrally downstream of ERK1/2 and promotes dorsoventral development in Annelida. Importantly, this signalling hierarchy is lost in annelids that secondarily transitioned to a maternally controlled, unequal cleavage, with some using Activin/Nodal and others relying on BMP to establish dorsoventral polarity only in the head. Unexpectedly, this divergence implies extensive rewiring of downstream targets involved in dorsoventral patterning. Together, our data clarify BMP’s ancestral axial role in Spiralia, uncovering a potential causal link between parallel shifts toward unequal spiral cleavage and the emergence of developmental system drift, a pervasive yet poorly understood phenomenon in animal embryogenesis.
AB - The Bone Morphogenetic Protein (BMP) pathway is the ancestral signalling system patterning the dorsoventral axis in bilaterally symmetrical animals. However, in Spiralia, a large bilaterian clade including molluscs and annelids, BMP’s axial function varies across species, obscuring the ancestral developmental role of this pathway. Here, we study four annelid species to demonstrate that BMP is ancestrally downstream of ERK1/2 and promotes dorsoventral development in Annelida. Importantly, this signalling hierarchy is lost in annelids that secondarily transitioned to a maternally controlled, unequal cleavage, with some using Activin/Nodal and others relying on BMP to establish dorsoventral polarity only in the head. Unexpectedly, this divergence implies extensive rewiring of downstream targets involved in dorsoventral patterning. Together, our data clarify BMP’s ancestral axial role in Spiralia, uncovering a potential causal link between parallel shifts toward unequal spiral cleavage and the emergence of developmental system drift, a pervasive yet poorly understood phenomenon in animal embryogenesis.
U2 - 10.1038/s41467-026-71950-7
DO - 10.1038/s41467-026-71950-7
M3 - Article
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 17
SP - 1
EP - 18
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
M1 - 5381
ER -