Adonin Leonid, Drozdov Anatoliy, Barlev Nickolai A
Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Dolgoprudny, Russia.
Institute of Environmental and Agricultural Biology (X-BIO), Tyumen State University, Tyumen, Russia.
Front Genet. 2021 Jan 20;11:627259. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2020.627259. eCollection 2020.
The purple sea urchin has been used for over 150 years as a model organism in developmental biology. Using this model species, scientists have been able to describe, in detail, the mechanisms of cell cycle control and cell adhesion, fertilization, calcium signaling, cell differentiation, and death. Massive parallel sequencing of the sea urchin genome enabled the deciphering of the main components of gene regulatory networks during the activation of embryonic signaling pathways. This knowledge helped to extrapolate aberrations in somatic cells that may lead to diseases, including cancer in humans. Furthermore, since many, if not all, developmental signaling pathways were shown to be controlled by non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), the sea urchin organism represents an attractive experimental model. In this review, we discuss the main discoveries in the genetics, genomics, and transcriptomics of sea urchins during embryogenesis with the main focus on the role of ncRNAs. This information may be useful for comparative studies between different organisms, and may help identify new regulatory networks controlled by ncRNAs.
紫海胆作为发育生物学中的模式生物已被使用了150多年。利用这个模式物种，科学家们得以详细描述细胞周期控制、细胞黏附、受精、钙信号传导、细胞分化和死亡的机制。对海胆基因组进行大规模平行测序，使得在胚胎信号通路激活过程中能够解读基因调控网络的主要成分。这些知识有助于推断体细胞中可能导致疾病（包括人类癌症）的异常情况。此外，由于许多（如果不是全部）发育信号通路都显示受非编码RNA（ncRNA）控制，海胆生物体是一个有吸引力的实验模型。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了海胆胚胎发育过程中遗传学、基因组学和转录组学方面的主要发现，主要关注ncRNA的作用。这些信息可能有助于不同生物体之间的比较研究，并可能有助于识别由ncRNA控制的新调控网络。
