Ancient origins of walking on land - the walking skate.

From Jung et al., in the Feb. 8 issue of Cell, report finding that the circuits underlying vertebrate ambulation on dry land appear in a skate many millions of years before fish crawled out of the prehistoric ocean.




Highlights

•The little skate Leucoraja erinacea exhibits bipedal walking-like behaviors 

•Neuronal subtypes essential for walking originated in primitive jawed fish 

•Fin and limb motor neurons share a common Hox-dependent gene network 

•Modulation of Hox patterning facilitates evolutionary changes in MN organization

Summary

Walking is the predominant locomotor behavior expressed by land-dwelling vertebrates, but it is unknown when the neural circuits that are essential for limb control first appeared. Certain fish species display walking-like behaviors, raising the possibility that the underlying circuitry originated in primitive marine vertebrates. We show that the neural substrates of bipedalism are present in the little skate Leucoraja erinacea, whose common ancestor with tetrapods existed ∼420 million years ago. Leucoraja exhibits core features of tetrapod locomotor gaits, including left-right alternation and reciprocal extension-flexion of the pelvic fins. Leucoraja also deploys a remarkably conserved Hox transcription factor-dependent program that is essential for selective innervation of fin/limb muscle. This network encodes peripheral connectivity modules that are distinct from those used in axial muscle-based swimming and has apparently been diminished in most modern fish. These findings indicate that the circuits that are essential for walking evolved through adaptation of a genetic regulatory network shared by all vertebrates with paired appendages.