The Unicellular Ancestry of Animal Development

摘要: The transition to multicellularity that launched the evolution of animals from protozoa marks one most pivotal, and poorly understood, events in life's history. Advances phylogenetics comparative genomics, particularly study choanoflagellates, are yielding new insights into biology unicellular progenitors animals. Signaling adhesion gene families critical for animal development (including receptor tyrosine kinases cadherins) evolved before origin Innovations transcriptional regulation expansions certain may have allowed integration cell behavior during earliest experiments with multicellularity. protozoan perspective on origins promises provide a valuable window distant past cellular bases development.