The animal toolkit: notes and reading
This page is meant to be a scratchpad for concepts and readings that are best suited to a book for an educated lay reader, so the page will be updated regularly as I work on examples and explanations.
The animal toolkit, also known as the metazoan genetic toolkit, is roughly the subset of genes in an animal genome that control the animal's development. The toolkit genes encode proteins of three basic types:
1. Transcription factors that turn other genes on and off.
2. Signaling proteins that control the transfer of information between and within cells.
3. Cell adhesion proteins that mediate and control adhesion of cells to each other and to surfaces and that control the signaling that can result from that.
Toolkit genes are a small fraction of an animal's genes. Toolkit genes can be specific to animals, or specific to particular subsets of animal types, or in some cases predate the existence of animals.
Readings (OA = open access)
Overviews of the toolkit
Carroll, S. B., Weatherbee, S. D., Grenier, J. K. (2001). From DNA to Diversity: Molecular Genetics and the Evolution of Animal Design. United Kingdom: Wiley.
Carroll, S. B. (2006). Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo. United Kingdom: W. W. Norton.
Rokas A. (2008). The origins of multicellularity and the early history of the genetic toolkit for animal development. Annual review of genetics, 42, 235–251.
OA Frédéric, M. Y., Lundin, V. F., Whiteside, M. D., Cueva, J. G., Tu, D. K., Kang, S. Y., Singh, H., Baillie, D. L., Hutter, H., Goodman, M. B., Brinkman, F. S., & Leroux, M. R. (2013). Identification of 526 conserved metazoan genetic innovations exposes a new role for cofactor E-like in neuronal microtubule homeostasis. PLoS genetics, 9(10), e1003804.
Key readings on transcription factors in the toolkit
[under construction]
Key readings on signaling proteins in the toolkit
OA Babonis Leslie S. and Martindale Mark Q. (2017) Phylogenetic evidence for the modular evolution of metazoan signalling pathways. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B37220150477.
OA Perrimon, N., Pitsouli, C., & Shilo, B. Z. (2012). Signaling mechanisms controlling cell fate and embryonic patterning. Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in biology, 4(8), a005975. https://doi.org/10.1101/cshperspect.a005975.
Gerhart J. (1999). 1998 Warkany lecture: signaling pathways in development. Teratology, 60(4), 226–239.
Key readings on cell adhesion proteins in the toolkit
[under construction]
Last updated 14 January 2023
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