Lamy Clément, Lemaire Patrick
Laboratoire de Biologie Moléculaire du Développement, Département de Biophysique, Université de Kyoto, Kitashirakawa-Oiwake, Sakyo-ku, 606-8304 Kyoto, Japon.
Med Sci (Paris). 2008 Mar;24(3):263-9. doi: 10.1051/medsci/2008243263.
Ascidian embryos were the first animal embryos to be experimentally manipulated by Man at the end of the 19th century. The mosaic theory of development was born from these experiments and those carried out by Conklin 20 years later. These astonishing animals, some of which are eaten as delicacies in France and other countries, belong to the tunicates, which are the only animals to produce cellulose. They are, however, the closest living relatives to the vertebrates. Neglected throughout most of the 20th century, ascidians have recently come back in the limelight in the wake of the sequencing of the genomes of Ciona intestinalis and Ciona savignyi. These small, unduplicated genomes harbour 16,000 to 20,000 genes and are 20 times smaller than the human genome. Ciona eggs can be microinjected and easily electroporated, which make this system suitable for the study of developmental gene regulatory networks.
19世纪末，海鞘胚胎成为人类首个进行实验操作的动物胚胎。发育的镶嵌理论源于这些实验以及20年后康克林所做的实验。这些令人称奇的动物属于被囊动物，其中一些在法国和其他国家被当作美味佳肴食用，它们是唯一能产生纤维素的动物。然而，它们却是现存与脊椎动物亲缘关系最近的动物。在20世纪的大部分时间里，海鞘都被忽视了，最近随着肠鳃纲动物和萨氏海鞘基因组测序的完成，海鞘再度成为人们关注的焦点。这些小型的、未重复的基因组含有16000到20000个基因，比人类基因组小20倍。海鞘卵可以进行显微注射并易于进行电穿孔操作，这使得该系统适用于发育基因调控网络的研究。
