Developmental Cell
Volume 7, Issue 3, September 2004, Pages 313-325
Journal home page for Developmental Cell

Review
The Unicellular Ancestry of Animal Development

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.devcel.2004.08.010Get rights and content
Under an Elsevier user license
open archive

Abstract

The transition to multicellularity that launched the evolution of animals from protozoa marks one of the most pivotal, and poorly understood, events in life's history. Advances in phylogenetics and comparative genomics, and particularly the study of choanoflagellates, are yielding new insights into the biology of the unicellular progenitors of animals. Signaling and adhesion gene families critical for animal development (including receptor tyrosine kinases and cadherins) evolved in protozoa before the origin of animals. Innovations in transcriptional regulation and expansions of certain gene families may have allowed the integration of cell behavior during the earliest experiments with multicellularity. The protozoan perspective on animal origins promises to provide a valuable window into the distant past and into the cellular bases of animal development.

Cited by (0)