Lancelets, or amphioxus, are small worm-like marine animals that spend most of their lives buried in the sea floor, filter-feeding through jawless, ciliated mouths. The vertebrate affinities of these ...

The genome sequence of a species of amphioxus, an iconic organism in the history of evolutionary biology, opens up a fresh vista on the comparative investigation of chordates and vertebrates. The ...

Those of you who took high school biology may remember the lancelet, also known as the amphioxus. Its simplified body plan is notable for containing a number of features that it shares in common with ...

Vertebrate evolution was accompanied by two rounds of whole genome duplication followed by functional divergence in terms of regulatory circuits and gene expression patterns. As a basal and ...

Research on the genome of a marine creature led by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego is shedding new light on a key area of the tree of life. Linda Holland, a research ...

Whether or not the vertebrate head is fundamentally segmented has been controversial for over 150 years. Beginning in the late 19th century, segmentalist theories proposed that the vertebrate head ...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 108, No. 22 (May 31, 2011), pp. 9160-9165 (6 pages) FGF signaling is one of the few cell—cell signaling pathways ...

As if tiny flashlights were hidden inside its body, a fish-like creature emits fluorescent flecks, a flashing ability previously considered unique to jellyfish and corals. Researchers found that the ...

In a primitive marine organism, scientists find photosensitive cells that may be ancestral to the "circadian receptors" in the mammalian retina. Among the animals that are appealing "cover models" for ...

Research on the genome of a marine creature is shedding new light on a key area of the tree of life. Because amphioxus is evolving slowly -- its body plan remains similar to that of fossils from the ...