Epithelial cell extrusion in a sea anemone shares key hallmarks with bilaterians and is dynamically regulated by nutritional status. During starvation-induced body shrinkage, extrusion likely contribu...

Here they show that gastruloids made of embryonic cells of the sea anemone Nematostella can robustly regenerate whole organisms. They show that Notch signaling is crucial to sort out the randomly disp...

A comparative analysis of cnidarian larval morphogenesis combined with active surface theory identifies a set of mesoscale mechanical modules that predict species-specific shapes. Manipulating these m...

New 3D reconstructions of a key sensory organ in ctenophores reveal an unexpected structural and functional complexity. The findings suggest that an elementary brain may have already appeared in our m...

The choanoflagellate Choanoeca flexa forms motile and contractile cell monolayers purely clonally, purely aggregatively or through a combination of both processes depending on environmental condi...

How did eukaryotic cells with complex architecture evolve from simpler prokaryotic cells? DNA analyses offer possible answers.

EMBL and its community are deeply saddened by the death of Peer Bork, the organisation’s Interim Director General.

This study reconstructs the gene regulatory networks that define cell types in the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis, providing a valuable resource for comparative regulatory genomics and the evoluti...

Animals with lifelong growth modulate cell proliferation in response to nutrient availability, but the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. This study shows that starvation induces a revers...

Tournière et al. uncover the biological roles of sex chromosome dosage compensation, showing it is broadly dispensable except in the respiratory system during metamorphosis, where X chromosome dose de...

Benthic animals live on or in the seafloor, a habitat known as the benthic zone. These bottom-dwelling organisms account for the largest fraction of animal diversity in our seas, playing vital roles i...

New work from the Steinmetz group at the Michael Sars Centre unveils the secrets behind the starlet sea anemone's extraordinary ability to adjust its body size according to food availability.

New work from the Steinmetz group at the Michael Sars Centre unveils the secrets behind the starlet sea anemone's extraordinary ability to adjust its body size according to food availability.

Via genetic ablation of neurons, Mazloumi Gavgani et al. show that the nervous system is essential for defining axial polarity during whole-body regeneration in the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis.

Long-read sequencing in 18 unicellular eukaryotes reveals that 6mA is widespread across eukaryotes and is enriched at transcriptionally permissive regions, which are also marked by H3K4me3.

Nature Communications - Here, the authors investigate chromatin-based gene regulation in the closest relative of animal, choanoflagellates. They uncover a putative dual role for the histone...

Magdalene College is deeply saddened to announce the death of Professor Sir John Gurdon FRS, who served as Master of the College from 1995 to 2002.

Freire-Delgado and Brunet discover a new mode of cell motility in choanoflagellates, the closest relatives of animals. Under mild confinement, choanoflagellate move over surfaces without cell deformat...

In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for producing the worker caste, resulting in males from the same moth...

A microRNA that arose at the origin of eumetazoans regulates cell adhesion and signaling in C. elegans through conserved targets.