[
Evol Dev,
2002]
A popular hypothesis about animal diversification is that unique changes occurred in the Precambrian or Cambrian (ca. 700-500 million of years [Myr] ago) to produce the distinctive features of all animal "Bauplne" ("body plans") and that such changes have not occurred since (Gould 1989:47). In contrast, we suggest that changes similar to the key innovations initiating the appearance of these distinctive features occur repeatedly during evolution. A major example is the "inversion" of the dorsoventral axis in the evolution of chordates (Arendt and Nbler-Jung 1994), initiated by a switch in mouth position from the neural to the abneural side. Here we note that similar changes in mouth position evolved < 50 Myr ago at least twice in a group of nematodes related to Caenorhabditis elegans. Because this means that such changes were not unique to the Cambrian, they can be studied by experimental approaches in closely related extant organisms. A direct consequence of this focus on studying elemental key changes is that "Bauplan" becomes a less useful concept for understanding how animal diversity
Budai Z, Mehta A, Herit F, Shakir MA, Petric M, Zhou Z, Rajnavolgyi E, Takacs-Vellai K, Boissan M, Sandor S, Orban TI, Farkas Z, Kovacs T, Szondy Z, Jung SY, Niedergang F, Liu X, Qin J, Bajtay Z
[
FASEB J,
2019]
Phagocytosis of various targets, such as apoptotic cells or opsonized pathogens, by macrophages is coordinated by a complex signaling network initiated by distinct phagocytic receptors. Despite the different initial signaling pathways, each pathway ends up regulating the actin cytoskeletal network, phagosome formation and closure, and phagosome maturation leading to degradation of the engulfed particle. Herein, we describe a new phagocytic function for the nucleoside diphosphate kinase 1 (NDK-1), the nematode counterpart of the first identified metastasis inhibitor NM23-H1 (nonmetastatic clone number 23) nonmetastatic clone number 23 or nonmetastatic isoform 1 (NME1). We reveal by coimmunoprecipitation, Duolink proximity ligation assay, and mass spectrometry that NDK-1/NME1 works in a complex with DYN-1/Dynamin (<i>Caenorhabditis elegans</i>/human homolog proteins), which is essential for engulfment and phagosome maturation. Time-lapse microscopy shows that NDK-1 is expressed on phagosomal surfaces during cell corpse clearance in the same time window as DYN-1. Silencing of NM23-M1 in mouse bone marrow-derived macrophages resulted in decreased phagocytosis of apoptotic thymocytes. In human macrophages, NM23-H1 and Dynamin are corecruited at sites of phagosome formation in F-actin-rich cups. In addition, NM23-H1 was required for efficient phagocytosis. Together, our data demonstrate that NDK-1/NME1 is an evolutionarily conserved element of successful phagocytosis.-Farkas, Z., Petric, M., Liu, X., Herit, F., Rajnavolgyi, E., Szondy, Z., Budai, Z., Orban, T. I., Sandor, S., Mehta, A., Bajtay, Z., Kovacs, T., Jung, S. Y., Shakir, M. A., Qin, J., Zhou, Z., Niedergang, F., Boissan, M., Takacs-Vellai, K. The nucleoside diphosphate kinase NDK-1/NME1 promotes phagocytosis in concert with DYN-1/dynamin.