RT Journal Article T1 Hagfish and lamprey Hox genes reveal conservation of temporal colinearity in vertebrates A1 Pascual-Anaya, Juan A1 Sato, Iori A1 Sugahara, Fumiaki A1 Higuchi, Shinnosuke A1 Paps, Jordi A1 Ren, Yandong A1 Takagi, Wataru A1 Ruiz-Villalba, Adrián A1 Ota, Kinya G. A1 Wang, Wen A1 Kuratani, Shigeru K1 Peces - Evolución AB Hox genes exert fundamental roles for proper regional specification along the main rostro-caudal axis of animal embryos. They are generally expressed in restricted spatial domains according to their position in the cluster (spatial colinearity)—a feature that is conserved across bilaterians. In jawed vertebrates (gnathostomes), the position in the cluster also determines the onset of expression of Hox genes (a feature known as whole-cluster temporal colinearity (WTC)), while in invertebrates this phenomenon is displayed as a subcluster-level temporal colinearity. However, little is known about the expression profile of Hox genes in jawless vertebrates (cyclostomes); therefore, the evolutionary origin of WTC, as seen in gnathostomes, remains a mystery. Here, we show that Hox genes in cyclostomes are expressed according to WTC during development. We investigated the Hox repertoire and Hox gene expression profiles in three different species—a hagfish, a lamprey and a shark—encompassing the two major groups of vertebrates, and found that these are expressed following a whole-cluster, temporally staggered pattern, indicating that WTC has been conserved during the past 500 million years despite drastically different genome evolution and morphological outputs between jawless and jawed vertebrates. PB Springer Nature YR 2018 FD 2018 LK https://hdl.handle.net/10630/33019 UL https://hdl.handle.net/10630/33019 LA eng NO Nat Ecol Evol. 2018 May; 2(5): p859-866 NO This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review (when applicable) and is subject to Springer Nature’s AM terms of use, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections. The Version of Record is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0526-2 DS RIUMA. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Málaga RD 12 abr 2026