---
OA_place: repository
OA_type: green
_id: '21920'
abstract:
- lang: eng
text: 'Vertebrates display remarkable diversity of sensorimotor behaviors, each
adapted to distinct ecological and survival demands. This diversity raises fundamental
questions about the evolutionary origin of motor control: do conserved spinal
circuits underlie these behaviors, and how have they diverged across species.
Recent studies detail spinal cell-type architecture in mammals but comparable,
high-resolution atlases of the non-mammalian spinal cord are lacking. Here, we
compare spinal cord cell types between fish, frogs, mice and humans, spanning
∼450 million years of evolution. Across species, we define highly conserved programs
of cell type specification that segregate spinal neurons into nearly identical
cardinal classes during development. This contrasts with adult stages, when spinal
cell-type composition selectively diverges for excitatory neuron subpopulations.
Using spatial transcriptomics, we localize this species divergence to the superficial,
dorsal spinal cord, where variant neuropeptide expression defines mammalian-specific
cell types. The most dorsal spinal cord thus emerges as a recently evolved hub
for sensory integration in mammals, a neospinal cord analogous to the neocortex.'
acknowledgement: "We would like to thank the members of the Sweeney Lab for discussion
and support; Andrey\r\nBydanov for technical assistance with single-cell sequencing
processing; and Jay Bikoff,\r\nNikos Konstantinides, Maria Tosches, and Graziana
Gatto for comments on the manuscript. \r\nThis research was supported by: Horizon
Europe ERC Starting Grant 101041551 (L.B.S,\r\nY.I., S.P.); Special Research Program
(SFB) of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) F7814-B\r\n(L.B.S., S.P., E.M.T); Austrian
Science Fund (FWF) 10.55776/COE16 (L.B.S., Y.I., E.M.T.);\r\nAustrian Academy of
Sciences DOC Fellowship 27229 (S.P.); ERC Advanced Grant 742046\r\n(E.M.T.); NIH
award R24 OD031956 (L.P.); and in part by the Intramural Research\r\nProgram of
the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through 1ZIA NS003153 to A.J.L.\r\nThe contributions
of the NIH author are considered Works of the United States\r\nGovernment. The findings
and conclusions presented in this paper are those of\r\nthe authors and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the NIH or the U.S. Department\r\nof Health and Human Services. "
article_processing_charge: No
author:
- first_name: Yuri
full_name: Ignatyev, Yuri
last_name: Ignatyev
- first_name: Stavros
full_name: Papadopoulos, Stavros
id: 40606b92-f128-11eb-9611-bf66a98cfa5c
last_name: Papadopoulos
- first_name: Mateja
full_name: Soretić, Mateja
last_name: Soretić
- first_name: Jake
full_name: Yeung, Jake
id: 123012b2-db30-11eb-b4d8-a35840c0551b
last_name: Yeung
orcid: 0000-0003-1732-1559
- first_name: Tzi-Yang
full_name: Lin, Tzi-Yang
last_name: Lin
- first_name: Elly M
full_name: Tanaka, Elly M
last_name: Tanaka
- first_name: Leonid
full_name: Peshkin, Leonid
last_name: Peshkin
- first_name: Ariel J
full_name: Levine, Ariel J
last_name: Levine
- first_name: Mariano I
full_name: Gabitto, Mariano I
last_name: Gabitto
- first_name: Lora Beatrice Jaeger
full_name: Sweeney, Lora Beatrice Jaeger
id: 56BE8254-C4F0-11E9-8E45-0B23E6697425
last_name: Sweeney
orcid: 0000-0001-9242-5601
citation:
ama: Ignatyev Y, Papadopoulos S, Soretić M, et al. Innovations in spinal cord cell
type heterogeneity across vertebrate evolution. bioRxiv. doi:10.1101/2025.10.09.680955
apa: Ignatyev, Y., Papadopoulos, S., Soretić, M., Yeung, J., Lin, T.-Y., Tanaka,
E. M., … Sweeney, L. B. (n.d.). Innovations in spinal cord cell type heterogeneity
across vertebrate evolution. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.10.09.680955
chicago: Ignatyev, Yuri, Stavros Papadopoulos, Mateja Soretić, Jake Yeung, Tzi-Yang
Lin, Elly M Tanaka, Leonid Peshkin, Ariel J Levine, Mariano I Gabitto, and Lora
B. Sweeney. “Innovations in Spinal Cord Cell Type Heterogeneity across Vertebrate
Evolution.” BioRxiv, n.d. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.10.09.680955.
ieee: Y. Ignatyev et al., “Innovations in spinal cord cell type heterogeneity
across vertebrate evolution,” bioRxiv. .
ista: Ignatyev Y, Papadopoulos S, Soretić M, Yeung J, Lin T-Y, Tanaka EM, Peshkin
L, Levine AJ, Gabitto MI, Sweeney LB. Innovations in spinal cord cell type heterogeneity
across vertebrate evolution. bioRxiv, 10.1101/2025.10.09.680955.
mla: Ignatyev, Yuri, et al. “Innovations in Spinal Cord Cell Type Heterogeneity
across Vertebrate Evolution.” BioRxiv, doi:10.1101/2025.10.09.680955.
short: Y. Ignatyev, S. Papadopoulos, M. Soretić, J. Yeung, T.-Y. Lin, E.M. Tanaka,
L. Peshkin, A.J. Levine, M.I. Gabitto, L.B. Sweeney, BioRxiv (n.d.).
corr_author: '1'
date_created: 2026-05-27T06:54:04Z
date_published: 2025-10-11T00:00:00Z
date_updated: 2026-05-27T07:25:41Z
day: '11'
department:
- _id: LoSw
- _id: ScienComp
doi: 10.1101/2025.10.09.680955
fulldoi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.10.09.680955
language:
- iso: eng
main_file_link:
- open_access: '1'
url: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.10.09.680955
month: '10'
oa: 1
oa_version: Preprint
project:
- _id: ebb66355-77a9-11ec-83b8-b8ac210a4dae
grant_number: '101041551'
name: Development and Evolution of Tetrapod Motor Circuits
- _id: 907b765e-16d5-11f0-9cad-fef108a945b1
grant_number: '27229'
name: 'A Tale of Two Circuits: Rostrocaudal spinal cord patterning during the swim-to-limb
transition of Xenopus metamorphosis'
publication: bioRxiv
publication_status: submitted
status: public
title: Innovations in spinal cord cell type heterogeneity across vertebrate evolution
tmp:
image: /images/cc_by_nc_nd.png
legal_code_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode
name: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
(CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
short: CC BY-NC-ND (4.0)
type: preprint
user_id: 8b945eb4-e2f2-11eb-945a-df72226e66a9
year: '2025'
...