Agenda - Observatoire océanologique de Banyuls sur mer
Laboratoire Arago

Animal eyes can vary in complexity ranging from a single photoreceptor cell shaded by a pigment cell to elaborate arrays of these basic units, which allow image formation in compound eyes of insects or camera-type eyes of vertebrates. The evolution of the eye requires involvement of several distinct components – photoreceptors, screening pigment and genes orchestrating their proper temporal and spatial organization. For example, the evolutionary origin of the vertebrate eyes remains unsolved. Simple, putative light-sensitive structures have been described in the basal chordate amphioxus, but their relationship to vertebrate eyes has never been firmly established. Even Cnidarian jellyfish possess eyes structurally comparable to vertebrate eyes. We set out to molecularly characterize the cell types of the amphioxus frontal eye, to test their possible relatedness to the cell types of vertebrate eyes. Likewise, we have investigated genes involved in the assembly of jellyfish eyes. Our data provide an interesting insight into metazoan vision.

Séminaire présenté par Zbynek Kozmik (Institute of Molecular genetics, Czech Republic)