Kazuhiko Kawasaki and colleagues publish on the evolution of hypermineralized tissues in iScience

Kazuhiko Kawasaki and colleagues publish on the evolution of hypermineralized tissues in iScience!   They resolve the debate over the evolution of vertebrate hypermineralized tissues through analyses of matrix protein-encoding secretory calcium-binding phosphoprotein (SCPP) genes and phylogenetic inference of hypermineralized tissues. They find that genes AMBN and ENAM originated in concert with ancestral enamel, SCPP5 evolved in association with ganoin, and AMEL evolved with true enamel. Shifts in gene expression domain and timing explain the evolution of different hypermineralized tissues. They propose that hypermineralized tissues in osteichthyans coevolved with matrix SCPP genes.