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First published online November 17, 2005
Journal of Experimental Biology 208, 4355-4361 (2005)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2005
doi: 10.1242/jeb.01877

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Review Article

Cross-kingdom hormonal signaling: an insight from thyroid hormone functions in marine larvae

Andreas Heyland^* and Leonid L. Moroz

The Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience and Department of Neuroscience, University of Florida, FL, 32080 USA

^* Author for correspondence (e-mail: aheyland{at}ufl.edu)

Accepted 8 September 2005

Thyroid hormones (THs) are small, lipophilic signaling molecules built from tyrosine and iodine. TH action is well characterized in vertebrates, where these molecules play a fundamental role as regulators of development, metabolism, growth and differentiation. Increasing evidence suggests that THs also function in a variety of invertebrate species. Two alternative sources of hormone for animals are exogenous (from food items) and endogenous synthesis. We propose that exogenous THs can convey environmental information as well as regulate metabolism, revealing new communication avenues between organisms from different kingdoms. While such modes of cross-kingdom communication have been previously considered for fatty acid-based signaling and steroid hormones in plant–animal interactions, this is the first attempt to explore such a mode of action for TH signaling. We suggest that exogenous sources of TH (from food) may have been ancestral, while the ability to synthesize TH endogenously may have evolved independently in a variety of metazoans, resulting in a diversity of signaling pathways and, possibly, morphological structures involved in TH-signaling.

Key words: thyroid hormone, mollusc, echinoderm, iodine, nuclear hormone receptor, non-genomic action, sea urchin, Aplysia

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