Convergent deployment of ancestral functions during the evolution of mammalian flight membranes

Abstract

Lateral flight membranes, or patagia, have evolved repeatedly in diverse mammalian lineages. While little is known about patagium development, its recurrent evolution may suggest a shared molecular basis. By combining transcriptomics, developmental experiments, and mouse transgenics, we demonstrate that lateral Wnt5a expression in the marsupial sugar glider ( Petaurus breviceps ) promotes the differentiation of its patagium primordium. We further show that this function of Wnt5a reprises ancestral roles in skin morphogenesis predating mammalian flight and has been convergently used during patagium evolution in eutherian bats. Moreover, we find that many genes involved in limb development have been redeployed during patagium outgrowth in both the sugar glider and bat. Together, our findings reveal that deeply conserved genetic toolkits contribute to the evolutionary transition to flight in mammals.

Pronounced expression of extracellular matrix proteoglycans regulated by Wnt pathway underlies the parallel evolution of lip hypertrophy in East African cichlids

“…The Wnt signaling pathway is known to be a key regulator of the expression of ECM-related genes; for example, vcan is directly regulated by the Wnt/b-catenin and tcf4 signaling pathways, leading to vcan upregulation (Rahmani et al, 2005). Additionally, Wnt5a, a noncanonical pathway, plays a critical role in dermal condensation during mouse and sugar glider development (Feigin et al, 2023). Cellularlevel localization of gene expression for the canonical and non-canonical Wnt pathway is required for future examination of the involvement of the Wnt signaling pathway in lip hypertrophy.…”

Genome of the endangered eastern quoll (Dasyurus viverrinus) reveals signatures of historical decline and pelage color evolution

“…Assembly completeness was further assessed via the recovery of benchmarking orthologs using BUSCO v5.4.6 in genome mode with the mammalia_odb10 database 57 . BUSCO gene recovery in the eastern quoll assembly was compared to that of all other marsupial whole-genome assemblies hosted on the NCBI Genomes database and labelled as the representative genome for their species as of April 18th 2023 21 , 22 , 28 , 29 , 46 – 48 , 58 – 61 .…”

Genome of the endangered eastern quoll (Dasyurus viverrinus) reveals signatures of historical decline and pelage color evolution

“…Assembly completeness was further assessed via the recovery of benchmarking orthologs using BUSCO v5.4.6 in genome mode with the mammalia_odb10 database 54 . BUSCO gene recovery in the eastern quoll assembly was compared to that of all other marsupial whole-genome assemblies hosted on the NCBI Genomes database and labelled as the representative genome for their species as of April 18 th 2023 23; 24; 28; 29; 43-45; 55-58 .…”