Evolutionary Systems Biology
 

During cleavage sophisticated systems help to regulate and coordinate very specific genetic programs which will be used, in many cases, very late in development. Some of these programs are continually used while others are reused in different processes. Each of the dividing blastomeres acquires the knowledge where it has to go, what cell type it will become and which functions it will have to carry out and even more importantly which functions it must not carry out through stepwise processes called differentiation, specification and determination.

These processes are carried out on the genomic level through the function of Gene Regulatory Networks (GRNs). The sea urchin system is currently one of the leading models for the generation of GRNs of whole animal development. We are in the process of developing a new GRN builder (PyBios), which we are using for simulation experiments of whole animal development (fig1 for an example of the sea urchin enodomesoderm GRN). One particular focus in the lab is the generation and analysis of the GRNs responsible for sea urchin Oral-Aboral axis specification, a process comparable to dorso-ventral axis specification in vertebrate embryos and the GRN for neurogenesis.

please zoom into   Figure 1  for a snapshot  of the sea urchin enodomesoderm GRN
 

We are furtheron experimentally examining developmental GRNs across various other organisms ( ciona , amphioxus, xenoturbella, platynereis, zebrafish and mouse) to illuminate the origination of animal body plans and explain the cambrian explosion.

We have used the large scale analysis of the genetic pathways underlying the ambryonic axis setup by complex hybridisations with probes derived from  vegetalised , animalised and radialised seaurchin embryos onto the established Sea urchin embryo "Unigene" set.

We have setup a comprehensive database that allows the retrival of any infomation stemming from various EST and genome projects in the californian purple sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. Recently we have also started large scale genomic project for the european sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus .

Please visit

the Strongylocentrotus purpuratus EST database at:

http://goblet.molgen.mpg.de/cgi-bin/seaurchin-database.cgi
 

the Strongylocentrotus purpuratus GENOME database at: 

http://goblet.molgen.mpg.de/cgi-bin/seaurchin-genombase.cgi
 

the  Strongylocentrotus purpuratus Array screens database at: 

http://goblet.molgen.mpg.de/cgi-bin/seaurchin-hybsbase.cgi
 

he  Strongylocentrotus purpuratus Whome mount in situ hybridisation database at: 

http://goblet.molgen.mpg.de/cgi-bin/seaurchin-insitubase.cgi
 

the Paracentrotus lividus EST database at:

http://goblet.molgen.mpg.de/cgi-bin/webapps/paracentrotus.cgi
 
 

The newly established Ciona intestinalis microarray database:

http://goblet.molgen.mpg.de/cgi-bin/webapps/ciona.cgi
 

BLAST against various sea urchin datasets at:

http://goblet.molgen.mpg.de/cgi-bin/blast-seaurchin.cgi?db=urchibase
 
 

Sea Urchin Clones and filters are available on request to poustka@molgen.mpg.de
 

Library and Vectorinformation for Marine Genomics cDNA libraries
 

Paracentrotus cDNA macroarrays spot logs XY 2 Clone names_update_07_06_06
 

Amphiura_Full_length_cDNA_Marine_genomics_Spotlogs_complete_march2007
 

PLIV_LARGE_BAC_Spotlogs_Growth_Vector_Info.zip

some urchin pics
 

PUBLICATIONS
 

LINKS
 

Eric´s Endomesoderm Network

The Sea Urchin Genome Project at the Baylor College of Medicine
 
 

Last update: April 1st 2006 by Albert J. Poustka 
 

comments and questions to poustka@molgen.mpg.de
 

 Other Links
 

DISCLAIMER:

No responsibility for any secondary links 
 

END