A common developmental plan for neocortical gene-expressing neurons in the pallium of the domestic chicken Gallus gallus domesticus and the Chinese softshell turtle Pelodiscus sinensis

The six-layered neocortex is a unique characteristic of mammals and likely provides the neural basis of their sophisticated cognitive abilities. Although all mammalian species share the layered structure of the neocortex, the sauropsids exhibit an entirely different cytoarchitecture of the corresponding pallial region. Our previous gene expression study revealed that the chicken pallium possesses neural subtypes that express orthologs of layer-specific genes of the mammalian neocortex. To understand the evolutionary steps leading toward animal group-specific neuronal arrangements in the pallium in the course of amniote diversification, we examined expression patterns of the same orthologs and a few additional genes in the pallial development of the Chinese softshell turtle Pelodiscus sinensis, and compared these patterns to those of the chicken. Our analyses highlighted similarities in neuronal arrangements between the two species; the mammalian layer 5 marker orthologs are expressed in the medial domain and the layer 2/3 marker orthologs are expressed in the lateral domain in the pallia of both species. We hypothesize that the mediolateral arrangement of the neocortical layer-specific gene-expressing neurons originated in their common ancestor and is conserved among all sauropsid groups, whereas the neuronal arrangement within the pallium could have highly diversified independently in the mammalian lineage.