ArticleMolecular biology and evolution2015
Evidence for active maintenance of phylotranscriptomic hourglass patterns in animal and plant embryogenesis.
Article in Molecular biology and evolution, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 78 papers.
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78 citing papers in PubMed, 173 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Deep learning-based semantic matching of cis-regulatory DNA sequences facilitates the prediction of gene function.Nature plants · 2026Article
- Ecological success in freshwater lakes: insights from novel cultivated lineages of the abundant Nanopelagicales order.Microbiome · 2025Article
- Toward mechanisms underlying the developmental hourglass: evolvability and phylotypic conservation.EvoDevo · 2025Review
- The phylotranscriptomic profile of angiosperm seed development follows a reverse hourglass pattern.The Plant cell · 2025Article
- Gene Expression Analysis Provides Insights Into the Functional and Developmental Differentiations of Pleopodal Lungs in a Terrestrial Isopod Crustacean, Porcellio scaber.Evolution & development · 2025Article
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- Structural Rearrangements and Selection Promote Phenotypic Evolution in Anolis Lizards.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Co-option of transcription factors drives evolution of quantitative disease resistance against a necrotrophic pathogen.The Plant cell · 2025Article
- Comprehensive analysis of 1,771 transcriptomes from 7 tissues enhance genetic and biological interpretations of maize complex traits.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2025Article
- Evolutionary Consequences of Unusually Large Pericentric TE-rich Regions in the Genome of a Neotropical Fig Wasp.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Pra-GE-ATLAS: Empowering Pinus radiata stress and breeding research through a multi-omics database.Journal of integrative plant biology · 2025Article
- Strong Signatures of Selection on Candidate Genes Underlying Core Speciation Mechanisms in Desert Tortoises.Molecular ecology resources · 2025Article
- Evolutionary Dynamics of Glycoside Hydrolase Family 1 Provide Insights into Insect-Plant Interactions in Lepidoptera.Insects · 2025Article
- Evolutionary Transcriptomics of Cancer Development.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Topologically associating domains and the evolution of three-dimensional genome architecture in rice.The Plant journal : for cell and molecular biology · 2025Article
18 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The developmental hourglass model has been used to describe the morphological transitions of related species throughout embryogenesis. Recently, quantifiable approaches combining transcriptomic and evolutionary information provided novel evidence for the presence of a phylotranscriptomic hourglass pattern across kingdoms. As its biological function is unknown it remains speculative whether this pattern is functional or merely represents a nonfunctional evolutionary relic. The latter would seriously hamper future experimental approaches designed to test hypotheses regarding its function. Here, we address this question by generating transcriptome divergence index (TDI) profiles across embryogenesis of Danio rerio, Drosophila melanogaster, and Arabidopsis thaliana. To enable meaningful evaluation of the resulting patterns, we develop a statistical test that specifically assesses potential hourglass patterns. Based on this objective measure we find that two of these profiles follow a statistically significant hourglass pattern with the most conserved transcriptomes in the phylotypic periods. As the TDI considers only recent evolutionary signals, this indicates that the phylotranscriptomic hourglass pattern is not a rudiment but possibly actively maintained, implicating the existence of some linked biological function associated with embryogenesis in extant species.
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