AUTHOR=Leclere Lucas , Röttinger Eric TITLE=Diversity of cnidarian muscles: function, anatomy, development and regeneration JOURNAL=Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology VOLUME=4 YEAR=2017 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/cell-and-developmental-biology/articles/10.3389/fcell.2016.00157 DOI=10.3389/fcell.2016.00157 ISSN=2296-634X ABSTRACT=
The ability to perform muscle contractions is one of the most important and distinctive features of eumetazoans. As the sister group to bilaterians, cnidarians (sea anemones, corals, jellyfish, and hydroids) hold an informative phylogenetic position for understanding muscle evolution. Here, we review current knowledge on muscle function, diversity, development, regeneration and evolution in cnidarians. Cnidarian muscles are involved in various activities, such as feeding, escape, locomotion and defense, in close association with the nervous system. This variety is reflected in the large diversity of muscle organizations found in Cnidaria. Smooth epithelial muscle is thought to be the most common type, and is inferred to be the ancestral muscle type for Cnidaria, while striated muscle fibers and non-epithelial myocytes would have been convergently acquired within Cnidaria. Current knowledge of cnidarian muscle development and its regeneration is limited. While orthologs of myogenic regulatory factors such as MyoD have yet to be found in cnidarian genomes, striated muscle formation potentially involves well-conserved myogenic genes, such as