The last common ancestor of animals lacked the HIF pathway and respired in low-oxygen environments

Animals have a carefully orchestrated relationship with oxygen. When exposed to low environmental oxygen concentrations, and during periods of increased energy expenditure, animals maintain cellular oxygen homeostasis by enhancing internal oxygen delivery, and by enabling the anaerobic production of...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:eLife 2018-02, Vol.7
Main Authors: Mills, Daniel B, Francis, Warren R, Vargas, Sergio, Larsen, Morten, Elemans, Coen Ph, Canfield, Donald E, Wörheide, Gert
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation, Physiological
Animals
Biological Evolution
Canfield, Donald E
Ctenophora - genetics
early animal evolution
Energy expenditure
Environment
Evolution (Biology)
Evolutionary Biology
Gene expression
Gene Expression Regulation
Genes
Genomes
Genomics
Geobiology
Homeostasis
hypoxia-inducible factor
Hypoxia-inducible factors
Metabolic Networks and Pathways - genetics
Metabolism
Oceans
Oxygen
Oxygen - metabolism
oxygen sensing
Phylogenetics
Porifera
Porifera - genetics
Proteins
Respiration
Scientists
Tethya wilhelma
Transcription
Transcription, Genetic
Trees
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Animals have a carefully orchestrated relationship with oxygen. When exposed to low environmental oxygen concentrations, and during periods of increased energy expenditure, animals maintain cellular oxygen homeostasis by enhancing internal oxygen delivery, and by enabling the anaerobic production of ATP. These low-oxygen responses are thought to be controlled universally across animals by the hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF). We find, however, that sponge and ctenophore genomes lack key components of the HIF pathway. Since sponges and ctenophores are likely sister to all remaining animal phyla, the last common ancestor of extant animals likely lacked the HIF pathway as well. Laboratory experiments show that the marine sponge maintains normal transcription under oxygen levels down to 0.25% of modern atmospheric saturation, the lowest levels we investigated, consistent with the predicted absence of HIF or any other HIF-like pathway. Thus, the last common ancestor of all living animals could have metabolized aerobically under very low environmental oxygen concentrations.
ISSN:2050-084X
2050-084X
DOI:10.7554/eLife.31176