Ciona intestinalis
Species of ascidian / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Ciona intestinalis (sometimes known by the common name of vase tunicate) is an ascidian (sea squirt), a tunicate with very soft tunic. Its Latin name literally means "pillar of intestines", referring to the fact that its body is a soft, translucent column-like structure, resembling a mass of intestines sprouting from a rock.[1] It is a globally distributed cosmopolitan species. Since Linnaeus described the species, Ciona intestinalis has been used as a model invertebrate chordate in developmental biology and genomics.[2] Studies conducted between 2005 and 2010 have shown that there are at least two, possibly four, sister species.[3][4][5] More recently it has been shown that one of these species has already been described as Ciona robusta.[6] By anthropogenic means, the species has invaded various parts of the world and is known as an invasive species.[7][8]
Ciona intestinalis | |
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Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Subphylum: | Tunicata |
Class: | Ascidiacea |
Order: | Phlebobranchia |
Family: | Cionidae |
Genus: | Ciona |
Species: | C. intestinalis |
Binomial name | |
Ciona intestinalis (Linnaeus, 1767) | |
Although Linnaeus first categorised this species as a kind of mollusk, Alexander Kovalevsky found a tadpole-like larval stage during development that shows similarity to vertebrates. Recent molecular phylogenetic studies as well as phylogenomic studies support that sea squirts are the closest invertebrate relatives of vertebrates.[9] Its full genome has been sequenced using a specimen from Half Moon Bay in California, US,[10] showing a very small genome size, less than 1/20 of the human genome, but having a gene corresponding to almost every family of genes in vertebrates.