Gene therapy is a critical constituent of treatment approaches for genetic diseases and has
gained tremendous attention. Treating and preventing diseases at the genetic level using …

The capacity to regenerate lost or injured body parts is a widespread feature within
metazoans and has intrigued scientists for centuries. One of the most extreme types of …

Reef-building corals are keystone species that are threatened by anthropogenic stresses
including climate change. To investigate corals' responses to stress and other aspects of …

The evolutionary transition from diffusion-mediated cell-cell communication to faster,
targeted synaptic signaling in animal nervous systems is still unclear. Genome sequencing …

In animals, body axis patterning is based on the concentration-dependent interpretation of
graded morphogen signals, which enables correct positioning of the anatomical structures …

In mammals, cyclic dinucleotides (CDNs) bind and activate STING to initiate an antiviral type
I interferon response. CDNs and STING originated in bacteria and are present in most …

Venoms have evolved> 100 times in all major animal groups, and their components, known
as toxins, have been fine-tuned over millions of years into highly effective biochemical …

Gene duplication is a major force driving evolutionary innovation. A classic example is
generating new animal toxins via duplication of physiological protein-encoding genes and …

Cnidarians are the only non-bilaterian group to evolve ciliated larvae with an apical sensory
organ, which is possibly homologous to the apical organs of bilaterian primary larvae. Here …

How did cells of early metazoan organisms first organize themselves to form a body axis?
The canonical Wnt pathway has been shown to be sufficient for induction of axis in Cnidaria …