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Abstract: Pituitary gland, or pituitary for short, is characteristic of all vertebrates. As a “master gland” controlling a multitude of important functions in the body, its evolutionary origin has been an object of investigations of evolutionary biology for two centuries. Previous morphological, ultrastructural and immunohistochemical studies suggested the homology of the Hatschek’s pit of amphioxus and vertebrate pituitary. Developmental genetics study showed that the development of Hatschek’s pit and vertebrate pituitary is both subject to regulation by the common genes such as Pit1, Lhx3 and BMP3b. Our recent studies demonstrated that the Hatschek’s pit is able to secrete growth hormone (GH)-like hormone and thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH)-like hormone that both play functions similar to vertebrate GH and TSH. We thus think that the emergence of Hatschek’s pit represents one of important events during endocrine network evolution, which laid a foundation for the subsequent formation of a hypothalamic-pituitary system in vertebrates.
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Key words:
- protochordate /
- amphioxus /
- brain /
- pituitary /
- evolution
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Figure 2. Development of vertebrate pituitary (a) and main signalling pathways and factors controlling pituitary development (b). a. Pituitary development starts with the formation of the hypophyseal placode, apposed to the future ventral diencephalon. The placode later invaginates to form Rathke’s pouch (RP), still in contact in its dorsal most part with the infundibulum, which lies within the ventral diencephalon. The infundibulum then evaginates towards RP. The anterior and intermediate lobes originate from RP. b. During pituitary development, the temporal and spatial expression of a cascade of signaling molecules and transcription factors plays a crucial role in organ commitment, cell proliferation, patterning, and terminal differentiation.
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