Abstract
Echinoderms have long served as model organisms for a variety of biological research, especially in the field of developmental biology. Although the genome of the purple sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus has been sequenced, it is the only echinoderm whose whole genome sequence has been reported. Nevertheless, data is rapidly accumulating on the chromosomes and genomic sequences of all five classes of echinoderms, including the mitochondrial genomes and Hox genes. This blossoming new data will be essential for estimating the phylogenetic relationships among echinoderms, and also to examine the underlying mechanisms by which the diverse morphologies of echinoderms have arisen.
Highlights
Echinoderms are deuterostome invertebrate animals, phylogenetically most closely related to hemichordates and to chordates
Expression studies at the spatial or temporal levels, which are beyond the focus of this review, have been reported from a limited number of echinoderm species, S. purpuratus [64, 66, 90,91,92], T. gratilla [64, 69,70,71], H. pulcherrimus [73], H. purpurescens [93], H. erythrogramma [76], H. tuberculata [76], P. angulosus [78], P. exigua [94], and M. rotundus [84]
Sequencing of species other than S. purpuratus is currently progressing, for example, some BAC sequences for L. variegatus and Asterina miniata are available at the SpBase website
Summary
Echinoderms are deuterostome invertebrate animals, phylogenetically most closely related to hemichordates and to chordates. Compared to chordates, with the exception of arthropods, other animals including echinoderms are not well investigated, and the sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus is the only fully sequenced echinoderm [9]. The primary reason why the whole genome of the sea urchin was sequenced is because the echinoderm embryo is a useful model system [9].
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