Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Making Teeth To Order: Conserved Genes Reveal An Ancient Molecular Pattern In Paddlefish (Actinopterygii), Moya M. Smith, Zerina Johanson, Thomas Butts, Rolf Ericsson, Melinda Modrell, Frank Tulenko, Marcus C. Davis, Gareth J. Fraser

Faculty and Research Publications

Ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii) are the dominant vertebrate group today (+30 000 species, predominantly teleosts), with great morphological diversity, including their dentitions. How dental morphological variation evolved is best addressed by considering a range of taxa across actinopterygian phylogeny; here we examine the dentition of Polyodon spathula (American paddlefish), assigned to the basal group Acipenseriformes. Although teeth are present and functional in young individuals of Polyodon, they are completely absent in adults. Our current understanding of developmental genes operating in the dentition is primarily restricted to teleosts; we show that shh and bmp4, as highly conserved epithelial and mesenchymal genes for …