Sponges are the simplest multicellular animals and lack tissues and organs. They have a basic body plan and five main cell types. While they lack complexity, sponges exhibit some characteristics of more complex animals like metazoans including cellular differentiation, complex sexual reproduction, and the ability to distinguish self from non-self. Placozoans may represent the simplest animal phylum and have only four cell types but cellular junctions that are similar to more complex animals. Debate remains around whether sponges and placozoans are the earliest branching animals or were secondarily simplified from more complex ancestors.
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1. Phylum Porifera
-- 5000 -10000 sp.
-- mostly marine some
none terrestrial
-- 3 classes, most important
distinction are skeletal
characteristics
2. I. General Ecological Characteristics
II. Body Plan
III. Metazoan Characteristics
A. Cell types
B. Allorecognition
C. Reproduction and Embryology
D. Other metazoan homologies.
IV. Sponge Phylogeny
Phylum Porifera
3. I. General Ecological Characteristics
Sponges are:
Sessile, benthic
Filter feeders
Competitors for space
Fed upon by specialist predators
Grow in many forms, solitary,
colonial, branching, as thin
sheets over substrates
From few cm to over 1 m in size
Estimated in some cases to be
several hundred years old
4. The classification of sponges is based on skeletal morphology
II. General Characteristics of
the Porifera Body Plan
6. 3 major types of body construction
Asconoid
Syconoid
Leuconoid
(this has little to do with the
classification of sponges, which is
based on skeletal morphology)
II. General Characteristics of
the Poriferan Body Plan
12. II. Other Characteristics of
the Poriferan Body Plan
No true muscular system
Lacking sensory organs, nervous system
Often amorphous and asymmetrical,
no anterior, posterior, oral surfaces
No true tissues
All physiological functions carried out
at the cellular level
Begs the question: Colony of protista or
a simple metazoan (i.e. an integrated animal ?)
14. Stem cells have the capacity of self-replication
and to give rise to more than one type of
mature daughter cells
Image courtesy of BioMEDIA ASSOCIATES
Archeocytes in sponge embryos are considered
totipotent stem cells that can give rise to an
entire organism
- in adults they produce a few cell types
(sclerocytes, germ cells, etc.) but not an
entire organism; they are considered
pluripotent
Muller (2006) Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology #17:481-491
16. Sexual reproduction involves fertilization, release of a planktonic
larva, and its eventual settlement and metamorphosis on the bottom.
III. Metazoan-like Characteristics of Sponges
Parenchymula or
Amphiblastula
Carried in the plankton
Settlement &
metamorphosis
Adult
Juvenile
Egg
sperm
Unique but complex embryonic development, with a hollow
blastula stage but does not form a gastrula
17. III. Metazoan-like Characteristics of Sponges
C. Other sponge metazoan homologies: Epithelium
-- pinacoderm: epithelial-like layer homologous to animal
epithelia with collagenous sublayer ( ...but basal lamina
only in Homoscleromorphs)
-- septate junctions (desmosomes) albeit primitive and small
(only Calcarea has full animal-like desmosomes)
-- extracellular matrix
-- spongin is collagen-like molecule
-- ubiquitin protein similarity (tag other proteins
for proteolysis)
18. Integrative and Comparative Biology Advance Access published online on June
22, 2009
Integrative and Comparative Biology, doi:10.1093/icb/icp038
Epithelia and integration in sponges
Sally P. Leys1,*, Scott A. Nichols{dagger} and Emily D. M. Adams*
*Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB,
Canada T6G 2E9; {dagger}Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University
of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Correspondence: 1E-mail: sleys@ualberta.ca
An epithelium is important for integrity, homeostasis, communication and co-ordination, and its
development must have been a fundamental step in the evolution of modern metazoan body plans. Sponges
are metazoans that are often said to lack a true epithelium. We assess the properties of epithelia, and
review the history of studies on sponge epithelia, focusing on their homology to bilaterian epithelia, their
ultrastructure, and on their ability to seal. Electron micrographs show that adherens-type junctions are
present in sponges but they can appear much slighter than equivalent junctions in other metazoans. Fine
septae are seen in junctions of all sponge groups, but distinct septate junctions are only known from
Calcarea. Similarly, all sponges can have collagenous sheets underlying their epithelia, but only
homoscleromorphs are established to have a distinct basal lamina. The presence of most, but not all, gene
families known to be involved in epithelial development and function also suggests that sponge epithelia
function like, and are homologous to, bilaterian epithelia. However, physiological evidence that sponge
epithelia regulate their internal environment is so far lacking. Given that up to six differentiated epithelia
can be recognized in sponges, distinct physiological roles are expected. Recognition that sponges have
epithelia challenges the perception that sponges are only loose associations of cells, and helps to relate the
biology and physiology of the body plan of the adult sponge to the biology of other metazoans.
19. III. Metazoan-like Characteristics of Sponges
C. Other sponge metazoan homologies:
Regulation of Development
-- True Hox genes are not found, but many homologous
developmental transcription factors are conserved
-- Most of the developmental signaling pathways
(Wnt, Notch) and they are expressed along the same
embryonic axis in sponges (and Cnidaria).
Many of these signaling pathways and transcription
factors have not been found in Protists.
From Adamaska et al., 2011
20. Some sponges form new individuals hours after their
cells are separated from one another. If species are
combined, the cells segregate with their own
III. Metazoan-like Characteristics of Sponges
Allorecognition
D. Non-self recognition
21. Metazoan-like Characteristics of Sponges
Allorecognition Histoincompatability
Immune response:
antagonism toward foreign substances
antagonism must be specific toward that substance
future responses should be altered by the first response
The sponge immune response is mediated by molecules which have
been found to control histo-recognition in deuterostomes
including Immunoglobulin-like domains and citokines
22. Summary
-- Sponges lack complexity, but their body plan is
ecologically and evolutionarily successful
--They should be considered metazoans
since they have fundamental characteristics of
multicellular animals;
--They are derived from flagellated protists but may be a
early and now distant branch of the metazoa;
animals are monophyletic
23. Phylum Placozoa
-- 2-3 mm, 25 um- thick, resembling a large ameba
-- Lacks anterior posterior polarity
-- Asexual reproduction is prevalent
--The most primitive animal?
Trichoplax adhaerens
24. Phylum Placozoa Dorsal
Fiber synctium
cilium
epithelium-like layer
thick glandular layer
Flagellated cells
-- Feed ventrally by absorption of digested material
-- Lack organs but tissue-like outer walls (no basement membrane)
-- A bit more than 2000 cells
-- Only 4 different cell types (20 in sponges; > 220 in mammals)
-- Smallest genome of all animals
Intercellular
junctions
25. Three competing Scenarios
A. Earliest view of them as the basal metazoan
B. Special cellular junctions consisting of two opposing
dense plaques (desmosomes) not found in most sponges
C. 16S rRNA datamaybe secondarily simplified from more
complex ancestors?
26. Mitochondrial genome of
Trichoplax adhaerens
supports Placozoa as the
basal lower metazoan phylum
Dellaporta, Stephen L.
et al. (2006) Proc. Natl.
Acad. Sci. USA 103,
8751-8756
Largest known mt genome 46
kbp, 2x that of most metazoa
with introns and other
intrageneic spacers and large
protein coding regions that are
usually lacking in other animals
Blue: known mt proteins
Gray: ribosomal genes
Green: unknown open reading frames
Red lines: introns