Over 600 million years ago, animals evolved from a unicellular or colonial organism whose
cell (s) captured bacteria with a collar complex, a flagellum surrounded by a microvillar …

Animal tissues are made up of multiple cell types that are increasingly well-characterized,
yet our understanding of the core principles that govern tissue organization is still …

Animals and fungi have radically distinct morphologies, yet both evolved within the same
eukaryotic supergroup: Opisthokonta,. Here we reconstructed the trajectory of genetic …

How animals evolved from a single-celled ancestor, transitioning from a unicellular lifestyle
to a coordinated multicellular entity, remains a fascinating question. Key events in this …

The emergence of animals from their unicellular ancestors is a major evolutionary event.
Thanks to the study of diverse close unicellular relatives of animals, we now have a better …

Choanoflagellates, the closest living relatives of animals, can provide unique insights into
the changes in gene content that preceded the origin of animals. However, only two …

Diverse microbial ecosystems underpin life in the sea. Among these microbes are many
unicellular eukaryotes that span the diversity of the eukaryotic tree of life. However, genetic …

The cellular microenvironment, characterized by an extracellular matrix (ECM), played an
essential role in the transition from unicellularity to multicellularity in animals (metazoans) …

The assembly of the neuronal and other major cell type programs occurred early in animal
evolution. We can reconstruct this process by studying non-bilaterians like placozoans …

Understanding the emergence of the Animal Kingdom is one of the major challenges of
modern evolutionary biology. Many genomic changes took place along the evolutionary …