Schematic drawing of cell clusters that comprise germ layers, organs, and tissues of gastrulae and larvae

A starfish, also known by the scientific name Patiria pectinifera.

Both chordate neural plate and ambulacrarian ciliary bands develop using a similar set of genes, suggesting these two organs are homologous.

(A) Expression profiles of development-relevant genes in the stomodeal (mouth opening) region. The stomodeum is formed by stomodeal ectoderm (orange), stomodeal endoderm (blue) and oral endoderm (green). Most of genes expressed in these regions are major component genes of vertebrate Spemann’s organizer. (B) (Left) Gene expression pattern of chordate dorsal structures (notochord + floor plate), and (right) that of starfish larval stomodeum, transverse section of dotted line of (A). This suggests the ambulacrarian stomodeum plays a role of vertebrate Spemann’s organizer.  

Based on shared expression profiles of transcription factor genes and cellular signaling molecule genes, constituent cells of starfish embryos and larvae can be categorized into 22 clusters, numbered 0 to 21. Each dot represents each cell.

図３. aは地点8の礁斜面、bは地点21の礁池でのサンゴ礁。ダイバーが直接観察によって同定した造礁サンゴ属と環境DNA解析法によって同定された属はほぼ完全に一致した。