The 57th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Developmental Biologists

Chairpersons:Nagayasu Nakanishi(Univ. of Arkansas), Gaku Kumano(Tohoku Univ.)

Our understanding of animal development has advanced greatly through the studies of bilaterian models such as Drosophila and mice. However, bilaterians represent only one of the early-branching metazoans, which also include non-bilaterian groups - Cnidaria, Placozoa, Ctenophora, and Polifera. Therefore, fundamental mechanisms of animal development and their evolution cannot be fully understood by studying bilaterian development alone. Highlighting research on non-bilaterian lineage-specific traits and/or traits deeply shared between non-bilaterian and bilaterian animals, this workshop aims to explore knowledge difficult or impossible to obtain with bilaterian research only and to unravel fundamental mechanisms for generating diverse and complex cell types and tissues in animal development and evolution.