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MBE Advance Access published online on August 11, 2004
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msh229
Molecular Biology and Evolution © Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution 2004; all rights reserved
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Accepted July 22, 2004

Original Article

Identification of Chaetognaths As Protostomes is Supported by the Analysis of Their Mitochondrial Genome

Daniel Papillon 1*, Yvan Perez 2, Xavier Caubit 3, Yannick Le Parco 1

1 Centre d'Océanologie de Marseille, UMR 6540 CNRS DIMAR, Rue batterie des lions, 13007 Marseille, France
2 Laboratoire de Biologie Animale (Plancton), EA 2202, Université Aix-Marseille I, 3, place Victor Hugo, 13001 Marseille, France
3 Institut de Biologie du Développement de Marseille, Laboratoire de Génétique et Physiologie du Développement, campus de Luminy, 13288 Marseille cedex 09, France

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: papillon{at}com.univ-mrs.fr.


  Abstract

Determining the phylogenetic position of enigmatic phyla such as Chaetognatha is a longstanding challenge for biologists. Chaetognaths (or arrow worms) are small, bilaterally symmetrical metazoans. In the last decades, their relationships within the metazoans have been strongly debated because of embryological and morphological features shared with the two main branches of Bilateria: the deuterostomes and protostomes. Despite recent attempts based on molecular data, the Chaetognatha affinities have not yet been convincingly defined. In order to answer this fundamental question, we determined the complete mitochondrial DNA genome of Spadella cephaloptera. We report three unique features: it is the smallest metazoan mitochondrial genome known and lacks both atp8 and atp6 and all tRNA genes. Furthermore phylogenetic reconstructions show that Chaetognatha belongs to protostomes. This implies that some of embryological characters observed in chaetognaths, like a gut with a mouth not arising from blastopore (deuterostomy) and a mesoderm derived from archenterons (enterocoely) could be ancestral features (plesiomorphies) of bilaterians.

Keywords: Chaetognatha; mitochondria; gene loss; evolution; phylogeny; Spadella cephaloptera.
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