Common sea sponge may yield clues to early cell development

It’s not normally something that would inspire scuba divers to do a double take, but a species of sponge commonly found on the Great Barrier Reef has researchers all in a lather at the prospect of learning about the genesis of cell behaviour.

Species of sea sponge are believed to have existed a far back as 650 million years ago, and until recently have been most notable for their biologic simplicity. However initial results from a Berkeley University project to decode the Amphimedon queenslandica, a haplosclerid demosponge from the Reef reveal that sponges are a lot more sophisticated than first thought, and likely possess important clues regarding the processes by which cells first learned to behave the way that they do.

“Although the diversity of sponges and their uncertain phylogeny make it doubtful that any single species can reveal the intricacies of early animal evolution, comparison of the A. queenslandica draft genome with sequences from other species can provide a conservative estimate of the genome of the common ancestor of all animals and the timing and nature of the genomic events that led to the origin and early evolution of animal lineages,” reads an excerpt from the report The Amphimedon queenslandica genome and the evolution of animal complexity, which appeared online this week in Nature Magazine.

For example, it might surprise many to know that the sponge genome contains more than 18,000 individual genes, representing a diverse toolkit imbued with the instructions underpinning more complex creatures. Chief among these are processes for telling cells how to interact, grow in an orderly manner and to identify interlopers. In organisms with a neuromuscular system, the genome also has analogues of genes coding for muscle tissue and neurons.

The sponge genome project is being led by the Center for Integrative Genomics and Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, California. Several other academic institutions are involved in the ongoing project including the University of Queensland’s School of Biological Sciences.