Understanding the origins of animal multicellularity
We are an enthusiastic group of scientists trying to understand how life evolves; in particular how multicellular organisms evolved from their single-celled ancestors.Through passion, a bit of ingenuity and tons of collegiality, we want to create new research paths for others to follow.
Aim
We aim big. We address one of the most fundamental biological questions: how multicellular animals evolved from their unicellular ancestors.
Vision and Mission
Our vision is to decipher as much about how animals originated from unicellular relatives to be able to re-create that transition in the lab one day.
This will only be accomplished if we break the current huge bias we have about knowledge from unicellular relatives of animals. Therefore, our mission is to break that asymmetry by generating an open, taxon-wide functional platform of experimentally tractable unicellular relatives of animals for the use of the whole community.
Approach
We are an evolutionary biology lab. We are a genomics lab. A cell-biological lab. A protistologist lab. We are also a developmental biology lab. And a taxonomists lab! More importantly, we are an engaged team, a family that approaches science with an open mind, that joins forces with the best global partners when needed, and that commit to our values in everything we do.
What’s new?
24 April 2023 New paper out! Chemical factors induce aggregative multicellularity in a close unicellular relative of animals. Congratulations to Núria and everyone involved!
PNAS 110 (18): e2216668120
20 April 2023 MCG night over BCN skyline.
17 April 2023 Warm welcome to Jennah Dharamshi! She got an international postdoc grant from the Swedish Research Council.
1 April 2023 We all welcome a new postdoc . Marta Alvarez is a ComFuturo fellowship grantee. Congrats Ona!