Carl Zimmer wrote on evolution in jellyfish, with the fascinating conclusion that they bear greater molecular complexity than was previously thought. He cited a recent challenging review by Seipel and Schmid that discusses the evolution of triploblasty in the metazoa—it made me rethink some of my assumptions about germ layer phylogeny, anyway, so I thought I'd try to summarize it here. The story is clear, but I realized as I started to put it together that jeez, but we developmental biologists use a lot of jargon. If this is going to make any sense to anyone else, I'm going to have to step way back and explain a collection of concepts that we've been using since Lankester in the 19th century.
Continue reading "Diploblasts and triploblasts" (on Pharyngula)
1 Comment
gav · 3 July 2005
Remarkable, and extraordinary. Any other reason to think, apart from this, that the common ancestor of protostomes and deuterostomes was itself a triploblast? I'm (evidently) completely out of my depth here and would appreciate a life-line.