Martí-Solans J, Godoy-Marín H, Diaz-Gracia M, Onuma TA, Nishida H, Albalat R, Cañestro C.

Front Cell Dev Biol. 2021 Jun 9;9:700827. doi:10.3389/fcell.2021.700827

Massive Gene Loss and Function Shuffling in Appendicularians Stretch the Boundaries of Chordate Wnt Family Evolution.

Localised subcellular expression in the “postplasm” during early embryogenesis. Gene amplification by retrotranscription.

”8 O. dioica Wnts belonged to 4 Wnt subfamilies—i.e., Wnt5, Wnt10, Wnt11 (5 sequences) and Wnt16 subfamilies). The results, therefore, show that O. dioica have lost 9 Wnt subfamilies during its evolution. On the other hand, our results revealed that O. dioica has expanded the Wnt11 subfamily to at least 4 paralogs, named Odi_Wnt11a to Odi_Wnt11d.” “Odi_Wnt11b, Odi_Wnt11c, and Odi_Wnt11d, had no introns, pointing to the possibility of a retrotranscriptional origin during the evolution of the appendicularian lineage.”