Morphological Observation and Transcriptome Analysis of Ciliogenesis in Urechis unicinctus (Annelida, Echiura)

• Published in: International journal of molecular sciences Vol. 24; no. 14; p. 11537
• Main Authors: Kong, Dexu, Wei, Maokai, Liu, Danwen, Zhang, Zhengrui, Ma, Yubin, Zhang, Zhifeng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 16.07.2023; MDPI
• Subjects: ciliary type; ciliogenesis; CRISPR; Embryos; Genes; Innexin; Invertebrates; Kinases; Localization; Morphology; Sperm; Urechis unicinctus; Innexin; ciliary type; ciliogenesis; Urechis unicinctus
• ISSN: 1422-0067; 1661-6596; 1422-0067
• DOI: 10.3390/ijms241411537

During the early development of marine invertebrates, planktic larvae usually occur, and their body surfaces often form specific types of cilia that are involved in locomotion and feeding. The echiuran worm sequentially undergoes the formation and disappearance of different types of body surface cilia during embryonic and larval development. The morphological characteristics and molecular mechanisms involved in the process remain unclear. In this study, we found that body surface cilia in embryos and larvae can be distinguished into four types: body surface short cilia, apical tufts, circumoral cilia and telotrochs. Further, distribution and genesis of the body surface cilia were characterized using light microscope and electron microscope. To better understand the molecular mechanism during ciliogenesis, we revealed the embryonic and larval transcriptome profile of the key stages of ciliogenesis in using RNA-Seq technology. A total of 29,158 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were obtained from 24 cDNA libraries by RNA-Seq. KEGG pathway enrichment results showed that Notch, Wnt and Ca signaling pathways were significantly enriched during the occurrence of apical tufts and circumoral cilia. Furthermore, all DEGs were classified according to their expression pattern, and DEGs with similar expression pattern were grouped into a module. All DEG co-expression modules were correlated with traits (body surface short cilia, apical tufts, circumoral cilia and telotrochs) by WGCNA, the results showed DEGs were divided into 13 modules by gene expression patterns and that the genes in No. 7, No. 8 and No. 10 modules were to be highly correlated with the occurrence of apical tufts, circumoral cilia and telotrochs. The top 10 hub genes in the above three modules were identified to be highly correlated with ciliogenesis, including the reported cilium-related gene and unreported cilium-related candidate genes , , , and . Notably, was included in the top10 hub genes of the two modules (No. 7 and No. 8), suggesting that may play an important role in apical tufts, circumoral cilia and telotrochs genesis. This study revealed the characteristics of ciliogenesis on the body surface of embryos and larvae, providing basic data for exploring the molecular mechanism of ciliogenesis on the body surface.