In the second half of the eighteenth century, Schlosser and Ellis described the colonial
ascidian Botryllus schlosseri garnering the interest of scientists around the world. In the …

Background Botryllid ascidians are a group of marine invertebrate chordates that are
colonial and grow by repeated rounds of asexual reproduction to form a colony of individual …

The extracorporeal vasculature of the colonial ascidian Botryllus schlosseri plays a key role
in several biological processes: transporting blood, angiogenesis, regeneration, self-nonself …

Colonial tunicates are the only chordates that regularly regenerate a fully functional whole
body as part of their asexual life cycle, starting from specific epithelia and/or mesenchymal …

We demonstrate that the sessile tunicate Botryllus schlosseri is remarkably resilient to
applied loads by attaching the animals to an extensile substrate subjected to quasistatic …

Vascular diseases affect over 1 billion people worldwide and are highly prevalent among
the elderly, due to a progressive deterioration of the structure of vascular cells. Most of our …

Epithelial tubules form critical structures in lung, kidney, and vascular tissues. However, the
processes that control their morphogenesis and physiological expansion and contraction …

Tunicates are a diverse group of worldwide marine filter-feeders that are vertebrates' closest
invertebrate relatives. Colonial tunicates are the only know chordates that have been shown …

The diversification of life-histories is mediated by cooperation, innovations of biological
information, modularity, and heterochrony in development al processes. These processes …

Biological complexity is defined as the number of modules that compose an organism or a
biological system, the type of interactions between these modules, and new hierarchies that …