How to Grow an Organism Inside-Out: Evolution of an internal skeleton from an external skeleton in bilateral organisms

TL;DR

This paper proposes a computational model explaining how internal skeletons in bilateral animals could have evolved from external skeletons through an inside-out development process driven by orientation reversal in developmental cells.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hypothesis supported by computational simulations showing how an internal skeleton could evolve from an external one via orientation switching in developmental cells.

Findings

Inside-out development can be achieved by an orientation switch in bilateral founder cells.

The same developmental control network can produce internal or external skeletons depending on cell orientation.

Simulation results support the hypothesis that internal skeletons evolved from external skeletons through orientation reversal.

Abstract

An intriguing unanswered question about the evolution of bilateral animals with internal skeletons is how an internal skeleton evolved in the first place. Computational modeling of the development of bilateral symmetric organisms suggests an answer to this question. Our hypothesis is that an internal skeleton may have evolved from a bilaterally symmetric ancestor with an external skeleton. By growing the organism inside-out an external skeleton becomes an internal skeleton. Our hypothesis is supported by a computational theory of bilateral symmetry that allows us to model and simulate this process. Inside-out development is achieved by an orientation switch. Given the development of two bilateral founder cells that generate a bilateral organism, a mutation that reverses the internal mirror orientation of those bilateral founder cells leads to inside-out development. The new orientation is epigenetically inherited by all progeny. A key insight is that each cell contained in the newly evolved organism with the internal skeleton develops according to the very same downstream developmental control network that directs the development of its exoskeletal ancestor. The networks and their genomes are are identical, but the interpretation is different because of the cell's inverted orientation. The result is inside-out bilateral symmetric development generating an inside-out organism with an internal skeleton.