Research Interests

My lab's research interests are in the field of evolution and development, and more specifically the evolution of the deuterostomes. This major metazoan lineage is made up of four major groups; chordates, echinoderms, hemichordates, and a very recent addition; Xenoturbellida . The early evolutionary history of the deuterostomes remains poorly understood and surprisingly even the evolutionary origins of our own phylum, the chordates, remains a major puzzle for zoologists. This uncertainty is partly due to a poor early fossil record for this lineage, but also due to the enormous morphological disparity in adult body plans between the major groups. Reconstructing the body plan of a plausible common ancestor based on extant forms is fraught with difficulties. My work attempts to make some headway in this area, and has focused on investigating the role of developmental genes that underlie these divergent body plans and morphologies in hemichordates and echinoderms. By comparing the expression and roles of these genes to their orthologues in chordates I am trying to gain insights into early events in deuterostome evolution.

We have largely focused on the origins and early evolution of the vertebrate brain and central nervous system. While the brain is clearly a key innovation of our phylum, we understand very little about its evolutionary origins outside of the chordates. Much progress has been made in identifying the early molecular genetic program of brain patterning and morphogenesis in vertebrate model systems. We have been developing the hemichordate Saccoglossus kowalevskii as a less complex developmental model for addressing early evolution and origins of the vertebrate nervous system. As a phylum closely related to chordates, hemichordates are the most promising group for addressing issues of chordate brain evolution and development. Unlike chordates, their nervous system is organized on the basis of a nerve net rather than a centralized structure. We have been investigating conserved gene regulatory networks involved in the regionalization of the vertebrate brain during hemichordate development and find a remarkable conservation of gene expression despite the organizational disparity between the nervous systems of both groups. By this comparative approach, we are further developing this work to determine what aspects of central nervous system patterning predate the spectacular morphological elaboration of the vertebrate brain, and were present in the common ancestor of hemichordates and chordates.

More recently we have begun two new lines of research:

1. The evolution of mesoderm.

2. Evolution of asymmetry within the deuterostomes.

For more information on Evolution and Development at The University of Chicago go to http://www.ucevodevo.uchicago.edu.

Selected Publications

Lowe C.J., Wu M, Salic, A., Evans, L., Lander E., Stange-Thomann, N., Gruber, C., Gerhart, J., Kirschner, M. (2003) Anteroposterior Patterning in Hemichordates and the Origins of the Chordate Nervous System. Cell 113, 853-865. (PubMed)

Gerhart, J. Lowe, CJ., Kirschner M. Hemichordates and origin of chordates. (2005) Curr Opin Genet Dev. 15(4):461-7. (PubMed)

Lowe C. J., Terasaki M., Wu, M., Freeman, R.M. Jr., Runft, L., Kwan, K., Haigo, S., Aronowicz, J., Lander E., Gruber, C., Smith, M., Kirschner, M., Gerhart, J. (2006) Dorsoventral patterning in hemichordates: insights into early chordate evolution. PLoS Biol. Sep;4(9). (PubMed)

Aronowicz J, and Lowe C.J. Hox gene expression in the hemichordate S. kowalevskii and the evolution of deuterostome nervous systems. (2006) Integrative and Comparative Biology. ePUB Oct18.

Bourlat SJ, Juliusdottir T, Lowe CJ, Freeman R, Aronowicz J, Kirschner M, Lander ES, Thorndyke M, Nakano H, Kohn AB, Heyland A, Moroz LL, Copley RR, Telford MJ. (2006) Dueterostome phylogeny reveals monophyletic chordates and the new phylum Xenoturbellida. Nature. Nov 2:444(7115): 85-8. (PubMed)

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