Background Of the 20 or so signal transduction pathways that orchestrate cell-cell
interactions in metazoans, seven are involved during development. One of these is the …

Most epithelia in animals are colonized by microbial communities. These resident microbes
influence fitness and thus ecologically important traits of their hosts, ultimately forming a …

Molecular phylogenetic analyses have produced a plethora of controversial hypotheses
regarding the patterns of diversification of non-bilaterian animals. To unravel the causes for …

Background Characterization of the innate immune repertoire of extant cnidarians is of both
fundamental and applied interest-it not only provides insights into the basic …

We present the genome of the moon jellyfish Aurelia, a genome from a cnidarian with a
medusa life stage. Our analyses suggest that gene gain and loss in Aurelia is comparable to …

Nearly all metazoans show signs of bilaterality, yet it is believed the bilaterians arose from
radially symmetric forms hundreds of millions of years ago. Cnidarians (corals, sea …

Phylogenies are increasingly prominent across all of biology, especially as DNA sequencing
makes more and more trees available. However, their utility is compromised by widespread …

Phylogenetics can facilitate the study of plant domestication by resolving sister relationships
between crops and their wild relatives, thereby identifying the ancestors of cultivated plants …

A pervasive view is that undifferentiated stem cells are alone responsible for generating all
other cells and are the origins of cancer. However, emerging evidence demonstrates fully …

With representatives of more than 10,000 species from diverse clades scattered throughout
the world's oceans, Cnidaria is a moderately diverse phylum of Metazoa. As such, various …