Abstract

The vertebrate brain emerged more than ~500 million years ago in common evolutionary ancestors. To systematically trace its cellular and molecular origins, we established a spatially resolved cell type atlas of the entire brain of the sea lamprey—a jawless species whose phylogenetic position affords the reconstruction of ancestral vertebrate traits—based on extensive single-cell RNA-seq and in situ sequencing data. Comparisons of this atlas to neural data from the mouse and other jawed vertebrates unveiled various shared features that enabled the reconstruction of cell types, tissue structures and gene expression programs of the ancestral vertebrate brain. However, our analyses also revealed key tissues and cell types that arose later in evolution. For example, the ancestral brain was probably devoid of cerebellar cell types and oligodendrocytes (myelinating cells); our data suggest that the latter emerged from astrocyte-like evolutionary precursors in the jawed vertebrate lineage. Altogether, our work illuminates the cellular and molecular architecture of the ancestral vertebrate brain and provides a foundation for exploring its diversification during evolution.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-2023

Notes/Citation Information

© The Author(s) 2023, corrected publication 2023

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02170-1

Funding Information

This work was supported by grants from the European Research Council (no. 615253, OntoTransEvol), the European Commission (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions ITN: EvoCELL) and the Tschira foundation, which funded the Illumina NextSeq machine used for sequencing. D.M.M. and D.J. were supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (IOS 1656843), the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (RDE025940) and University of Colorado, Boulder RIO Innovative Seed Grant FY21 (all to D.M.M.). D.J. was also supported by a grant from the Scientific Grant Agency of the Slovak Republic (VEGA 1/0450/21). This project has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (VerteBrain to H.K., grant agreement no. 101019268; and NeuralCellTypeEvo to D.A., grant agreement no. 788921).

Download

Share

COinS