There is growing interest in the use of cnidarians (corals, sea anemones, jellyfish and
hydroids) to investigate the evolution of key aspects of animal development, such as the …

Reverse genetics and next‐generation sequencing unlocked a new era in biology. It is now
possible to identify an animal (s) with the unique biology most relevant to a particular …

Sea anemones are seemingly primitive animals that, along with corals, jellyfish, and hydras,
constitute the oldest eumetazoan phylum, the Cnidaria. Here, we report a comparative …

Mesoderm played a crucial role in the radiation of the triploblastic Bilateria, permitting the
evolution of larger and more complex body plans than in the diploblastic, non-bilaterian …

The spectacular escalation in complexity in early bilaterian evolution correlates with a strong
increase in the number of microRNAs,. To explore the link between the birth of ancient …

How animals (metazoans) originated from their single-celled ancestors remains a major
question in biology. As transcriptional regulation is crucial to animal development …

Dickinsonia is one of the most recognizable forms in the Ediacaran fauna, but its
phylogenetic position has been contentious, and it has been placed in almost every …

Germ layers are defined as cell layers that arise during early animal development, mostly
during gastrulation, and that give rise to all tissues and organs in adults. The evolutionary …

In recent years, a handful of model systems from the basal metazoan phylum Cnidaria have
emerged to challenge long‐held views on the evolution of animal complexity. The most …

Renewed interest in the developmental basis of organismal complexity, and the emergence
of new molecular tools, is improving our ability to study the evolution of metazoan body …