The Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience
Congratulations Dr. Leonid Moroz and Moroz Lab!
A new research paper was just published in Science by the Moroz lab (Prof. Leonid Moroz and Dr. Andrea Kohn) as a part of long-term collaboration with EMBL (Germany).
Profiling cellular diversity in sponges informs animal cell type and nervous system evolution
The paper provides the first deciphering the genealogy of the main cell types in descendants of early animals such as sponges using single-cell sequencing and advanced bioinformatics.
Unexpectedly, this research led to the discovery of a new cell type - so called neuroid cells, which are considered as components of alternative designs of neural and integrative systems in animals. In summary, this innovative research emphasizes the earlier Moroz’ hypothesis of independent origins of neurons and sheds light on the 150-year-old question - do sponges contain nervous systems or not?