Comparative larval single-cell transcriptomics provides insights into the evolutionary origins of sensory-neural programmes in Porifera and Cnidaria
Understanding how specialised cell types emerged and diversified is fundamental to reconstructing animal evolution. The origins of neural and sensory-secretory cell types are particularly intriguing, and early diverging non-neuronal metazoans, such as sponges, provide critical insights into pre-neural molecular toolkits. Free-swimming larval stages of sponges and cnidarians provide an unique…
A new study utilizing single-cell transcriptomics of larval stages from various sponge and jellyfish species reveals insights into the evolutionary origins of sensory and neural cell types. By comparing datasets from the demosponge Amphimedon queenslandica and four cnidarians – Nematostella vectensis, Astroides calycularis, Pocillopora acuta, and Clytia hemisphaerica – researchers identified broad conservation of major cell-type identities among these organisms.
The study found that sponge larval cells shared transcriptional similarities with cnidarian neural, sensory, and progenitor-associated cell types, suggesting that key components of neural systems were already present in early metazoans. Neural-associated gene modules linked to photoreception, neural fate specification, and postsynaptic scaffolding were distributed across various epithelial and sensory-like sponge larval cell populations rather than being confined to a single proto-neural cell type.
These findings support the idea that modern neural and sensory-secretory cell types emerged through the diversification and reorganization of molecular programs distributed across multiple ancestral sensory-secretory cell types in the common ancestor of sponges and cnidarians.
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