ArticleNature2010
Gene expression divergence recapitulates the developmental hourglass model.
Article in Nature, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 208 papers.
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Who cites it
208 citing papers in PubMed.
- Network Properties Influence Covariance Between Gene Expression and Fecundity Fitness of Caenorhabditis elegans in a Novel Laboratory Environment.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- SimMapNet: a Bayesian framework for gene regulatory network inference using gene ontology similarities as external hint.BMC bioinformatics · 2026Article
- Internalized Evolutionary Inertia on Body Plan Evolution.Evolution & development · 2026Review
- Natural variation in Arabidopsis uncouples leaf and flower development and reveals massive transcriptomic heterochrony.Journal of experimental botany · 2026Article
- Hypoxia-induced gene expression changes in N. vectensis embryos.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- A cellular basis for the hourglass pattern in vertebrate embryogenesis.Nature communications · 2026Review
- Cellular innovations and diversity in the lepidopteran compound eye.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2026Review
- Gene function predicts divergence across molecular levels.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Evolutionary pathway and genetic mechanisms of fin-to-limb transition in vertebrates.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2026Review
- Current Role of the Zebrafish Experimental Model in Pharmacological Evaluations of Drugs: Current and Future Perspectives.Current pharmaceutical design · 2026Review
- Toward mechanisms underlying the developmental hourglass: evolvability and phylotypic conservation.EvoDevo · 2025Review
- Conserved Gene Expression Plasticity in Development Is More Pervasive Than Expression Divergence Between Species of Caenorhabditis Nematodes.Evolution & development · 2025Article
- Article
- Genomic resources for the scuttle fly Megaselia abdita: a model organism for comparative developmental studies in flies.Development (Cambridge, England) · 2025Article
- Recently Evolved, Stage-Specific Genes Are Enriched at Life-Stage Transitions in Flies.Journal of experimental zoology. Part B, Molecular and developmental evolution · 2025Article
- Developmental system drift and modular gene regulatory networks shape gastrulation inLife science alliance · 2025Article
- Article
- Enigmatic Nodal and Lefty gene repertoire discrepancy: Latent evolutionary history revealed by vertebrate-wide phylogeny.Developmental dynamics : an official publication of the American Association of Anatomists · 2025Review
- Lineage-resolved analysis of embryonic gene expression evolution inScience (New York, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Rates of Evolution of Developmental Changes in Gene Expression in Sordariomycetes.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
148 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The observation that animal morphology tends to be conserved during the embryonic phylotypic period (a period of maximal similarity between the species within each animal phylum) led to the proposition that embryogenesis diverges more extensively early and late than in the middle, known as the hourglass model. This pattern of conservation is thought to reflect a major constraint on the evolution of animal body plans. Despite a wealth of morphological data confirming that there is often remarkable divergence in the early and late embryos of species from the same phylum, it is not yet known to what extent gene expression evolution, which has a central role in the elaboration of different animal forms, underpins the morphological hourglass pattern. Here we address this question using species-specific microarrays designed from six sequenced Drosophila species separated by up to 40 million years. We quantify divergence at different times during embryogenesis, and show that expression is maximally conserved during the arthropod phylotypic period. By fitting different evolutionary models to each gene, we show that at each time point more than 80% of genes fit best to models incorporating stabilizing selection, and that for genes whose evolutionarily optimal expression level is the same across all species, selective constraint is maximized during the phylotypic period. The genes that conform most to the hourglass pattern are involved in key developmental processes. These results indicate that natural selection acts to conserve patterns of gene expression during mid-embryogenesis, and provide a genome-wide insight into the molecular basis of the hourglass pattern of developmental evolution.
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