Background Planktonic ciliated larvae are characteristic for the life cycle of marine
invertebrates. Their most prominent feature is the apical organ harboring sensory cells and …

Signalling pathways are essential for the correct development of the central nervous system
(CNS) in bilaterian animals. Here we show that in the CNS of the annelid Platynereis …

Apical organs are relatively simple larval nervous systems. The extent to which apical
organs are evolutionarily related to the more complex nervous systems of other animals …

The ciliary band is a distinct region of embryonic ectoderm that is specified between oral and
aboral ectoderm. Flask-shaped ciliary cells and neurons differentiate in this region and they …

The apical plate of primary marine larvae is characterized by a common set of transcription
factors comprising six3, rx, hbn, nk2. 1 and FoxQ2. It harbours the apical organ, a neural and …

A great challenge in development biology is to understand how interacting networks of
regulatory genes can direct the often highly complex patterning of cells in a 3D embryo …

Animal bodies comprise diverse arrays of cells. To characterize cellular identities across an
entire body, we have compared the transcriptomes of single cells randomly picked from …

Apical organs are sensory structures present in many marine invertebrate larvae where they
are considered to be involved in their settlement, metamorphosis and locomotion. In …

Background Conservation of orthologous regulatory gene expression domains, especially
along the neuroectodermal anterior-posterior axis, in animals as disparate as flies and …

The subkingdom Bilateria encompasses the overwhelming majority of animals, including all
but four early-branching phyla: Porifera, Ctenophora, Placozoa, and Cnidaria. On average …