The origin of Metazoa: a unicellular perspective
Abstract
The first animals evolved from an unknown single-celled ancestor in the Precambrian period. Recently, the identification and characterization of the genomic and cellular traits of the protists most closely related to animals have shed light on the origin of animals. Comparisons of animals with these unicellular relatives allow us to reconstruct the first evolutionary steps towards animal multicellularity. Here, we review the results of these investigations and discuss their implications for understanding the earliest stages of animal evolution, including the origin of metazoan genes and genome function.
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Many components of the MC toolkit were already in place in the unicellular ancestors.
“although many components of the MC toolkit were already in place in the unicellular ancestors [203]”
From Fundamental constraints to the logic of living systems (2024) · cites this paper as [203]
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“In this context, although many components of the MC toolkit were already in place in the unicellular ancestors [203], black swan events might have also predated the origins of animals [204].”
BackgroundThe road to synthetic multicellularity
Solé, R., Ollé-Vila, A., Vidiella, B., Duran-Nebreda, S., & Conde-Pueyo, N. (2018) · Current Opinion in Systems Biology · doi:10.1016/j.coisb.2017.11.007 · Cited by 19 · see citing works
- Authors
- Sebé-Pedrós, A., Degnan, B. M., & Ruiz-Trillo, I.
- Affiliations
- Weizmann Institute of Science (IL)
- The University of Queensland (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Sebé-Pedrós, Arnau
- Venue
- Nature Reviews Genetics
- Published
- 2017-05-08
- Volume
- 18
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 498-512
- ISSN
- 1471-0056 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-0064
- OpenAlex
- W2614029615
- Cited by
- 332
- References
- 28
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 38 · 2024: 39 · 2023: 30 · 2022: 47 · 2021: 49 · 2020: 32 · 2019: 45 · 2018: 30 · 2017: 8
- FWCI
- 2.95
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature Reviews Genetics (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Protist diversity and phylogeny
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Paleontology › Marine Invertebrate Physiology and Ecology
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Developmental Biology and Gene Regulation
- Keywords
- metazoan origin, evolution of multicellularity, animal evolution, protists, Precambrian, genome function, intercellular communication, comparative genomics, functional genomics
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Biological Evolution, Humans, Phylogeny, Eukaryota
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