Our study, just published in #ScienceAdvances and funded by @hfspo.bsky.social, explores the post metamorphic cell composition of the sea urchin juvenile, revealing that its body is head-like. Long considered brainless creatures, they’re all brain instead! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A Nobel-winning scientist of great modesty and humour, John Gurdon died on 7 Oct. Not only did he make a discovery that laid the foundations for stem cell research, he also created one of the best environments for research at the Wellcome/CRUK Gurdon Institute wellcome.org/news/sir-joh...

Our latest: combining single-cell RNA-seq from 16 species and HCR validation, we show that monoaminergic neurons share a conserved transcriptional identity across Bilateria. In contrast, we find no evidence for this program in non-bilaterian metazoans. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Latest from ours: www.cell.com/cell-reports... This is two stories in one: a case study/cautionary tale on developing genetic tools in new organisms, and the first hint at a gene regulatory network for choanoflagellate multicellular development (which turn out to involve a Hippo/YAP/ECM loop!) A 🧵

A genome sequence and single-cell atlas of a marine worm species point towards bursts of gene emergence, duplication and loss as the drivers of lineage-specific body traits go.nature.com/4oAI2nf