Description
A pectoral fin skeleton comprising four proximal radial bones is one derived feature characteristic of the teleost fishes, which include zebrafish, medaka, fugu, and over 20,000 others. The four-bone plan thus appears to possess some developmental stability, but its mode of development represents a novel feature of a clade containing the teleosts. Thus while it renders the teleosts a poor model for the ancestral mode of development for pectoral appendages of other osteichthyans, such as tetrapods, it also offers a clear derived state for the study of morphogenesis within the ray-finned (actinopterygian) fishes. The primitive condition of pectoral fin development is probably well represented by the paddlefish Polyodon, whose proximal radials develop from separate mesenchymal condensations, more like the pattern seen in tetrapods. We present morphological and histological observations on the formation of the cartilage pattern in a teleost fish, the rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss, highlighting a series of specific research questions to be addressed in order to understand the basic processes of cartilage formation in the primitive and derived forms and the evolutionary changes that produced the teleost pattern.| Period | 2006 |
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| Event title | British Societies for Cell and Developmental Biology Joint Annual Spring Meeting |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | York, United KingdomShow on map |