Ancient gene linkages support ctenophores as sister to other animals

Abstract A central question in evolutionary biology is whether sponges or ctenophores (comb jellies) are the sister group to all other animals. These alternative phylogenetic hypotheses imply different scenarios for the evolution of complex neural systems and other animal-specific traits 1–6 . Conventional phylogenetic approaches based on morphological characters and increasingly extensive gene sequence collections have not been able to definitively answer this question 7–11 . Here we develop chromosome-scale gene linkage, also known as synteny, as a phylogenetic character for resolving this question 12 . We report new chromosome-scale genomes for a ctenophore and two marine sponges, and for three unicellular…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Awards: 1542679, DGE 1339067, 1339067, DEB-1542679
• DA
  David and Lucile Packard Foundation
• GA
  Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
• WT
  Wellcome Trust
• EC
  European Commission

  Award: 945026
• OI
  Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University
• DO
  Division of Environmental Biology