The Middle Cambrian Pikaia gracilens (Walcott) has an iconic position as a Cambrian
chordate, but until now no detailed description has been available. Here on the basis of the …

The Hox gene cluster has been a major focus in evolutionary developmental biology. This is
because of its key role in patterning animal development and widespread examples of …

Vertebrate evolution was accompanied by two rounds of whole-genome duplication
followed by functional divergence in terms of regulatory circuits and gene expression …

The common ancestor of all vertebrates had a highly sophisticated nervous system, but
questions remain about the evolution of vertebrate neural cell types. The amphioxus, a …

Gene duplication generates new genetic material that can contribute to the evolution of gene
regulatory networks and phenotypes. Duplicated genes can undergo subfunctionalization to …

Hox and ParaHox transcription factors are important for specifying cell fates along the
primary body axes during the development of most animals. Within Cnidaria, much of the …

The vertebrate forebrain or prosencephalon is patterned at the beginning of neurulation into
four major domains: the telencephalic, hypothalamic, retinal and diencephalic anlagen …

Background Nodal is an important determinant of the left-right (LR) body axis in bilaterians,
specifying the right side in protostomes and non-chordate deuterostomes as opposed to the …

Metazoan evolution encompasses a vast evolutionary time scale spanning over 600 million
years. Our ability to infer ancestral metazoan characters, both morphological and functional …

Previous studies of gene diversity in the homeobox superclass have shown that the Florida
amphioxus Branchiostoma floridae has undergone remarkably little gene family loss. Here …