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Published Online May 31, 2007
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1141560

Reports

Submitted on February 21, 2007
Accepted on May 10, 2007

Sponge Paleogenomics Reveals an Ancient Role for Carbonic Anhydrase in Skeletogenesis

Daniel J. Jackson 1, Luciana Macis 2, Joachim Reitner 2, Bernard M. Degnan 3, Gert Wörheide 2*

1 Geoscience Centre Göttingen, Department of Geobiology, Goldschmidtstr. 3, D-37077 Göttingen, Germany; School of Integrative Biology, University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia.
2 Geoscience Centre Göttingen, Department of Geobiology, Goldschmidtstr. 3, D-37077 Göttingen, Germany.
3 School of Integrative Biology, University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Gert Wörheide , E-mail: gert.woerheide{at}geo.uni-goettingen.de

Sponges (Porifera) were prolific reef-building organisms during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic. These ancient animals inherited components of the first multicellular skeletogenic toolkit from the last common ancestor of the Metazoa (LCAM). Using a paleogenomics approach, including gene and protein expression techniques and phylogenetic reconstruction, we show that a molecular component of this toolkit was the precursor to the {alpha}-carbonic anhydrases, a gene family used by extant animals in a variety of fundamental physiological processes. We used the coralline demosponge Astrosclera willeyana, a 'living fossil' that has survived from the Mesozoic, to provide insight into the evolution of the ability to biocalcify, and show that the {alpha}-CA family expanded from a single ancestral gene through several independent gene duplication events in sponges and eumetazoans.


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)