Abstract
Adult molluscs produce shells with diverse morphologies and ornamentations, different colour patterns and microstructures. The larval shell however, is a phenotypically more conserved structure. How do developmental and evolutionary processes generate varying diversity at different life history stages? Using live-imaging, histology, scanning electron microscopy and transcriptomic profiling, we have described shell development in a heteroconchian bivalve the Antarctic clam, Laternula elliptica and compared it to adult shell secretion processes in the same species. Adult downstream shell genes, such as those encoding extracellular matrix proteins and biomineralisation enzymes, were largely not expressed during shell development, and instead, a development-specific downstream gene repertoire was expressed. Upstream regulatory genes such as transcription factors and signalling molecules were conserved between developmental and adult shell secretion. Comparing heteroconchian transcriptomic data with recently reported pteriomorphian larval shell proteome data suggests that, despite being phenotypically more conserved, the downstream effectors constituting the larval shell “tool-kit” may be as diverse as that of adults. Overall, our new data suggests that a larval shell formed using development-specific downstream effector genes is a conserved and ancestral feature of the bivalve lineage, and possibly more broadly across the molluscs.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 221022 |
Pages (from-to) | 221022 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Royal Society Open Science |
Volume | 9 |
Issue number | 12 |
Early online date | 21 Dec 2022 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 21 Dec 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Acknowledgements and Funding InformationWe are grateful to Andrew Gillis for use for paraffin histology and microscopy equipment and enthusiastic support of this work and the Rothera marine team for collecting the adult Laternula elliptica broodstock.
This work was supported by UKRI Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Core Funding to the British Antarctic Survey, a DTG Studentship (Project Reference: NE/J500173/1) and a Junior Research Fellowship to V.A.S. from Wolfson College, University of Cambridge.
Review History: https://www.webofscience.com/api/gateway/wos/peer-review/10.1098/rsos.221022/
Funding Information:
This work was supported by UKRI Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Core Funding to the British Antarctic Survey, a DTG Studentship (Project Reference: NE/J500173/1) and a Junior Research Fellowship to V.A.S. from Wolfson College, University of Cambridge. Acknowledgements
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors.
Data Availability Statement
Raw read data generated in this publication are freely available at NCBI SRA with the following accession: PRJNA803976; transcriptome assembly, data matrices and candidate gene files are available from BioStudies (accession S-BSST926). All analysis scripts are available from: https://github.com/SleightLab/Lelliptica_bulkRNAseq_analysis. All analysis results tables are available from the UK Polar Data Centre, Sleight et al. [50]: https://doi.org/10.5285/6CD12DE1-02C7-4F94-86F0-C11E76B86067.The data are provided in the electronic supplementary material [51].
Keywords
- shell development
- evo devo
- mollusc
- biomineralization