Developmental origin of vertebrate exoskeleton

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24657148
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Developmental biology
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: Shimada Atsuko 東京大学, 理学(系)研究科(研究院), 助教 (20376552)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: exoskeleton

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The vertebrate mineralized skeleton is known to have first emerged as an exoskeleton that extensively covered the fossil jawless fish. The evolutionary origin of this exoskeleton has long been attributed to the emergence of the neural crest, but experimental evaluation for this is still poor. Here we tried to develop long-term labeling methods to Dogfish (Scyliorhinus canicula) in order to determine the embryonic origin of ancestral scales. It was found that labeling of somite cells could be possible by injection of DNA with 30 gage needles that are inserted through a thinned eggshell. Next we tried to find the progenitor cells of fins and scales within zebrafish somites and suggested that a small cell population near the notochord could be a candidate progenitor for bone forming cells of the fins and scales.

Free Research Field

発生学