From cell shape to organism shape: the cellular basis for the evolutionary origin of animal morphogenesis

My work concerns a critical question: How did the cellular mechanisms underpinning animal morphogenesis first evolve? While the first multicellular ancestors of modern animals have left limited fossil traces, insights can be gained by studying their closest living relatives: the choanoflagellates. This group of microeukaryotes has several features of high relevance to animal origins, including temporal cell differentiation, facultative multicellularity, and a metazoan-like ""developmental gene toolkit"". Importantly, they have become amenable to functional genetics in the past few years. We will study the molecular and cellular mechanisms of three morphogenetic processes in choanoflagellates: (1) the formation of the ""collar complex"", a ring of microvilli surrounding the flagellum, which represents an example of complex single-cell morphogenesis and has been central to hypotheses about animal origins