New Publication on the ascidian Ciona

Pubblicato il: 26.10.2020 12:24

The ontology of the anatomy and development of the solitary ascidian Ciona: the swimming larva and its metamorphosis

When a species becomes a developmental biology model, used by several laboratories around the world, a standardized resource relating developmental stages to the emergence of the anatomical structures becomes necessary. This is the anatomical and developmental ontology. The paper from Kohji Hotta (Keio University, Japan), Delphine Dauga (Bioself Communication; France) Lucia Manni (Dept. Biology, University of Padova, Italy) published in Scientific Reports (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73544-9) deals with the ontology of the solitary ascidian Ciona robusta. The ontology was codified previously until the hatching larva stage and has been now extended throughout the swimming larva stages, the metamorphosis, until the juvenile stages. It defines 12 new distinct developmental stages and more than 200 anatomical entities at cell lineage level and tissue/organ level. It is associated to an online anatomical atlas (with movies, confocal and histological images) and a dictionary with synonyms. This ontology will be the reference for future studies, allowing the standardization of data underpinning an accurate annotation of gene expression and the comprehension of mechanisms of differentiation.