Landscape of histone modifications in a sponge reveals the origin of animal cis -regulatory complexity

Combinatorial patterns of histone modifications regulate developmental and cell type-specific gene expression and underpin animal complexity, but it is unclear this regulatory system evolved. By analysing histone modifications in a morphologically-simple, early branching animal, the sponge , we show...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:eLife 2017-04, Vol.6
Main Authors: Gaiti, Federico, Jindrich, Katia, Fernandez-Valverde, Selene L, Roper, Kathrein E, Degnan, Bernard M, Tanurdžić, Miloš
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
A. queenslandica
Adults
Amphimedon
Animals
Biological Evolution
Chromatin
cis-regulation
Datasets
Deoxyribonucleic acid
Developmental Biology and Stem Cells
DNA
DNA methylation
Drosophila
Enhancers
evolution of multicellularity
Evolutionary genetics
Gene expression
Gene Expression Regulation
Genomes
Genomics and Evolutionary Biology
Histone Code
histone modifications
Insects
Nematostella vectensis
Phylogenetics
Porifera - genetics
Proteins
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Summary:Combinatorial patterns of histone modifications regulate developmental and cell type-specific gene expression and underpin animal complexity, but it is unclear this regulatory system evolved. By analysing histone modifications in a morphologically-simple, early branching animal, the sponge , we show that the regulatory landscape used by complex bilaterians was already in place at the dawn of animal multicellularity. This includes distal enhancers, repressive chromatin and transcriptional units marked by H3K4me3 that vary with levels of developmental regulation. Strikingly, enhancers are enriched in metazoan-specific microsyntenic units, suggesting that their genomic location is extremely ancient and likely to place constraints on the evolution of surrounding genes. These results suggest that the regulatory foundation for spatiotemporal gene expression evolved prior to the divergence of sponges and eumetazoans, and was necessary for the evolution of animal multicellularity.
ISSN:2050-084X
2050-084X
DOI:10.7554/elife.22194