Just trying to kill time on sunday afternoon as i didnot have enough motivation to do micro injections for generating transgenic Drosophila I was surfing some webpages and one of them led to new Technical note published in online first section of development Genes and evolution.Louis A. Boell & Gregor Bucher came out with a protocol for performing the difficult task of In situ Hybrization in Rotifer Brachionus plicatilis and also method for culturing this species so that this could establish B. plicatilis as a rotifer model system.The expression of Bp-Pax-6 is shown using whole-mount in situ hybridization is shown in this article.

Rotifer Movie
Originally uploaded by nebarnix

I take this opportunity to introduce you to Rotifers ,belonging toLophotrochozoa exhibit several evolutionary novelties like the wheel organ (corona), the median eye,and the nonpaired posterior foot.Even though its phylogenetic position is debated but according to recent study done by Dunn et al (Nature 452:745–749) placed this microscopic, non segmented animal at the base of lophotrochozoa.Another peculiarity about this enigmatic phylum is that some species reproduce by “Parthenogenesis”.Parthenogenesis is a form of asexual reproduction in which females produce eggs that develop without fertilization. Parthenogenesis is seen to occur naturally in aphids, daphnia, rotifers, and some other invertebrates, as well as in many plants.

One primary goal of evo devo is to decode Urbilateria -The last common ancestor of all bilaterians.In order to reconstruct ancestral embryonic patterning principles that were present in the urbilaterian, The expression of orthologous genes across the phyla is checked and similarities might indicate similar role of respective genes in urbilateria.Addition of Rotifers to elite club of model orgainsms in evo devo serves dual purpose in reconstruction of urbilateria by being a lophotrochozoan (many available protostomes model organisms are ecdysozoans) and non segmented (model system bias exists by over representation of segmented animals) model organism,which are not available in plenty for evo devo research.

Authors of this new article believe that The inexpensive easy culture and experimental tractability of Brachionus as well as the range of interesting questions to which it holds the key make it a promising addition to the “zoo” of evo-devo model organisms.

Reference:(Open access article in Development Genes and evolution)

Boell LA, Bucher G.
Whole-mount in situ hybridization in the Rotifer Brachionus plicatilis representing a basal branch of lophotrochozoans. Dev Genes Evol. 2008 Jul 2

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