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Nicholas H. Putnam,1Mansi Srivastava,2Uffe Hellsten,1Bill Dirks,2Jarrod Chapman,1Asaf Salamov,1Astrid Terry,1Harris Shapiro,1Erika Lindquist,1Vladimir V. Kapitonov,3Jerzy Jurka,3Grigory Genikhovich,4Igor V. Grigoriev,1Susan M. Lucas,1Robert E. Steele,5John R. Finnerty,6Ulrich Technau,4Mark Q. Martindale,7Daniel S. Rokhsar1,2*
Sea anemones are seemingly primitive animals that, along withcorals, jellyfish, and hydras, constitute the oldest eumetazoanphylum, the Cnidaria. Here, we report a comparative analysisof the draft genome of an emerging cnidarian model, the starletsea anemone Nematostella vectensis. The sea anemone genome iscomplex, with a gene repertoire, exon-intron structure, andlarge-scale gene linkage more similar to vertebrates than toflies or nematodes, implying that the genome of the eumetazoanancestor was similarly complex. Nearly one-fifth of the inferredgenes of the ancestor are eumetazoan novelties, which are enrichedfor animal functions like cell signaling, adhesion, and synaptictransmission. Analysis of diverse pathways suggests that thesegene "inventions" along the lineage leading to animals werelikely already well integrated with preexisting eukaryotic genesin the eumetazoan progenitor.
1 Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, Walnut Creek, CA 94598, USA. 2 Center for Integrative Genomics and Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. 3 Genetic Information Research Institute, 1925 Landings Drive, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA. 4 Sars International Centre for Marine Molecular Biology, University of Bergen, Thormøhlensgt 55, 5008, Bergen, Norway. 5 Department of Biological Chemistry and the Developmental Biology Center, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA. 6 Department of Biology, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA. 7 Kewalo Marine Laboratory, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96813, USA.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: dsrokhsar{at}lbl.gov
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