There were multiple prerequisites to the evolution of multicellular animal life, including the
generation of multiple cell fates (" cellular diversity") and their patterned spatial arrangement …

How animals establish and pattern the primary body axis is one of the most fundamental
problems in biology. Data from diverse deuterostomes (frog, fish, mouse, and amphioxus) …

INTRODUCTION The cnidarian polyp Hydra undergoes continual self-renewal and is
capable of whole-body regeneration from a small piece of tissue. The stem cell populations …

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 …

Intracellular targeting of mRNAs has long been recognized as a means to produce proteins
locally, but has only recently emerged as a prevalent mechanism used by a wide variety of …

Wnt genes are important regulators of embryogenesis and cell differentiation in vertebrates
and insects. New data revealed by comparative genomics have now shown that members of …

Wnt genes and β-Catenin signaling are involved in axial patterning processes in vertebrate
embryogenesis in setting up the Spemann–Mangold organizer in amphibian embryos. An …

The regulation of body axis specification in the common ancestor of bilaterians remains
controversial. BMP signaling appears to be an ancient program for patterning the secondary …

Evolving multicellularity is easy, especially in phototrophs and osmotrophs whose multicells
feed like unicells. Evolving animals was much harder and unique; probably only one …

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 …