Functional adaptive landscapes predict terrestrial capacity at the origin of limbs

Dickson, Blake V.; Clack, Jennifer A.; Smithson, Timothy R.; Pierce, Stephanie E.

doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2974-5

Cited by 39 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…These results are consistent with a long fuse between the acquisition of relatively well-developed limbs and emergence of terrestrial locomotion. Our findings are consistent with those of recent analyses concluding that early tetrapod forelimbs went through a phase of limb-substrate interaction [20] and that the humerus was well adapted to a walking gait rather than swimming [6]. We, however, provide further detail about the environment within which these limb motions were made.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…Using osteological correlates (in conjunction with the EPB), therefore, may not lead to a complete inference of soft tissue location or orientation in fossil material and thus removes some constraint from the biomechanical model thereby derived [3,20,21]. Furthermore, biomechanical inferences based on hypothesized soft tissue reconstructions only suggest that a given animal might have been capable of some range of motion, but provide little information on probable range of motion [1,6] or actual use. In 2012, the limb joint mobility of Ichthyostega was modelled [1] and the authors concluded the animal had potential terrestrial capabilities, based on the possible range of motion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Locomotory behaviour of early tetrapods from Blue Beach, Nova Scotia, revealed by novel microanatomical analysis

Lennie

Manske

Mansky³

et al. 2021

R. Soc. open sci.

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Evidence for terrestriality in early tetrapods is fundamentally contradictory. Fossil trackways attributed to early terrestrial tetrapods long predate the first body fossils from the Late Devonian. However, the Devonian body fossils demonstrate an obligatorily aquatic lifestyle. Complicating our understanding of the transition from water to land is a pronounced gap in the fossil record between the aquatic Devonian taxa and presumably terrestrial tetrapods from the later Early Carboniferous. Recent work suggests that an obligatorily aquatic habit persists much higher in the tetrapod tree than previously recognized. Here, we present independent microanatomical data of locomotor capability from the earliest Carboniferous of Blue Beach, Nova Scotia. The site preserves limb bones from taxa representative of Late Devonian to mid-Carboniferous faunas as well as a rich trackway record. Given that bone remodels in response to functional stresses including gravity and ground reaction forces, we analysed both the midshaft compactness profiles and trabecular anisotropy, the latter using a new whole bone approach. Our findings suggest that early tetrapods retained an aquatic lifestyle despite varied limb morphologies, prior to their emergence onto land. These results suggest that trackways attributed to early tetrapods be closely scrutinized for additional information regarding their creation conditions, and demand an expansion of sampling to better identify the first terrestrial tetrapods.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Locomotory behaviour of early tetrapods from Blue Beach, Nova Scotia, revealed by novel microanatomical analysis

Lennie

Manske

Mansky³

et al. 2021

R. Soc. open sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…scRNA-seq and FACS analyses implicate bone marrow-derived neutrophils and monocytes as key drivers of NLRP3-induced liver pathology. Neutrophils play prominent roles in injury resulting from drug-induced liver injury, physicochemical injury, the response to cell death, and bacterial infection (47)(48)(49)(50). They release elastase, MPO, reactive oxygen species (ROS), and secrete cytokines and chemokines, all of which fuel tissue injury, promote inflammation, and recruit additional inflammatory cells (51).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Single-Cell Transcriptomic Analysis of Livers During NLRP3 Inflammasome Activation Reveals a Novel Immune Niche

Calcagno

Chu

Gaul

et al. 2021

Preprint

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The NOD-like receptor protein 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome is a central contributor to human acute and chronic liver disease, yet the molecular and cellular mechanisms by which its activation precipitates injury remain incompletely understood. Here, we present single cell transcriptomic profiling of livers from a global transgenic Tamoxifen-inducible constitutively-activated Nlrp3A350V mutant mouse, and we investigate the changes in parenchymal and non-parenchymal liver cell gene expression that accompany inflammation and fibrosis. Our results demonstrate that NLRP3 activation causes chronic extramedullary myelopoiesis marked by an increase in proliferating myeloid progenitors that differentiate into neutrophils, monocytes, and monocyte-derived macrophages, results that were corroborated by flow cytometry and histological staining. We observed prominent neutrophil infiltrates with increased Ly6gHI and Ly6gINT cells exhibiting transcriptomic signatures of granulopoiesis typically found in the bone marrow. This was accompanied by a marked increase in Ly6cHI monocytes differentiating into Cd11bHITim4HIClec-4fHI macrophages that express proinflammatory transcriptional programs similar to macrophages of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) models. NLRP3 activation also downregulated metabolic pathways in hepatocytes and shifted hepatic stellate cells towards an activated pro-fibrotic state based on expression of collagen and extracellular matrix (ECM) regulatory genes. These results, which highlight abundant neutrophils and extramedullary granulopoiesis define an inflamed and fibrotic hepatic single cell microenvironment, precipitated solely by NLRP3 activation. Clinically, our data support the notion that neutrophils and NLRP3 should be explored as therapeutic targets in NASH-like inflammation.

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“…Their approach provides data on how performance capabilities map onto the possible and realized shapes of a structure. Furthermore, by synthesizing data from multiple performance surfaces, it is possible to approximate an adaptive landscape that can be used to identify functional trade‐offs (Dickson et al., 2021; Dickson & Pierce, 2019; Jones et al, 2021; Stayton, 2019a, 2019b), providing a more nuanced and holistic interpretation of morphological responses to selection.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(2016), Stayton (2019a, 2019b), Dickson and Pierce (2019) and Dickson et al. (2021) considered shapes that could be manipulated relatively easily to produce virtual models of morphologies covering the entire morphospace. In the case of Polly et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How many trees to see the forest? Assessing the effects of morphospace coverage and sample size in performance surface analysis

2021

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Linking morphology and function is critical to understanding the evolution of organismal shape. Performance landscapes, or performance surfaces, associate empirical functional performance data with a morphospace to assess how shape variation relates to functional variation. Performance surfaces for multiple functions also can be combined to understand the functional trade‐offs that affect the morphology of a particular structure across species. However, morphological performance surfaces usually require empirical determination of performance for a number of theoretical shapes that are evenly distributed throughout the morphospace. This process is time‐consuming, and is problematic for structures that are difficult to precisely manipulate. We sought to (a) understand the degree and pattern of sampling required to produce a reliable and nuanced performance surface and (b) investigate the possibility of building a surface using only naturally occurring morphologies. To do this, we subsampled a pre‐existing set of turtle shell performance surfaces in four different ways: first, uniform subsampling of theoretical morphologies across the surface; second, random subsampling of theoretical morphologies across the surface; third, a combination uniform/random subsampling method called close‐pairs sampling and fourth, subsampling only points on the surface known to correspond to a naturally occurring turtle shell morphology. Each subset was interpolated with ordinary Kriging to produce a new performance surface for comparison to the original. We found that using a fraction of the theoretical morphologies examined in the original study (half as many or fewer) was sufficient to produce a performance surface bearing close resemblance to the original (Pearson correlation ≥0.90); close‐pairs sampling dramatically increased the power of small sample sizes. We also discovered that only sampling points on the surface corresponding to naturally occurring morphologies produced an accurate surface, but results were better when individual specimens, rather than species averages, were used. Our findings demonstrate the viability of using performance surfaces to understand the evolution of complex morphologies for which theoretical shape modelling is difficult or computationally burdensome. Both lower levels of carefully configured sampling throughout the theoretical morphospace, and development of performance surfaces using only data from naturally occurring morphologies, are acceptable alternatives to the dense theoretical shape sampling employed in previous studies.

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Functional adaptive landscapes predict terrestrial capacity at the origin of limbs

Cited by 39 publications

References 49 publications

Locomotory behaviour of early tetrapods from Blue Beach, Nova Scotia, revealed by novel microanatomical analysis

Locomotory behaviour of early tetrapods from Blue Beach, Nova Scotia, revealed by novel microanatomical analysis

Single-Cell Transcriptomic Analysis of Livers During NLRP3 Inflammasome Activation Reveals a Novel Immune Niche

How many trees to see the forest? Assessing the effects of morphospace coverage and sample size in performance surface analysis

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