Evolutionary position
A filasterean: one of the closest unicellular relatives of animals.
FILASTEREA / MODEL 01
Capsaspora
owczarzaki
A living model for testing how cell aggregation could have contributed to animal origins.
Scanning electron microscopy · Multicellgenome Lab
ONE ORGANISM
Three ways
of being.
Capsaspora moves reversibly between three distinct cellular states. Together, they reveal how a unicellular relative of animals can change shape, behaviour and social organisation.
THE LIFE CYCLE
Choose a state
02 / Aggregative
Cells that come together.
Individual cells assemble into reversible multicellular aggregates, connected through an intricate network of filopodia.
THE EVOLUTIONARY QUESTION
Could animal multicellularity have begun through aggregation?
Capsaspora does not answer this question by itself. It gives us something just as important: a living experimental system in which to test how cells recognise one another, come together and coordinate multicellular behaviour.
WHY CAPSASPORA?
A singular window
into animal origins.
Reversible multicellularity
Cells enter and leave an aggregative state, allowing the transition to be observed experimentally.
An ancestral genetic toolkit
Its genome contains genes once considered unique to animals — including T-box, Runx and NF-κB transcription factors, the integrin adhesion machinery and tyrosine kinases.
THE EXPERIMENTAL SYSTEM
From an obscure protist
to a model organism.
Over two decades, Capsaspora has become a platform for connecting cell behaviour with genomes, signalling and evolution.
- 01Axenic culture
- 02Live-cell microscopy
- 03Chemical aggregation assays
- 04Transient transfection
- 05Genome editing
- 06Life-stage transcriptomics
- 07Proteomics & phosphoproteomics
- 08Quantitative modelling
GENOME & DATA
Open the organism.
KEY DISCOVERIES
The papers that made
Capsaspora a model.
2004
Finding Capsaspora's place
Phylogenetic evidence established Capsaspora as an independent opisthokont lineage close to animals.
↗2013Reading the genome
Its genome revealed a rich ancestral genetic toolkit for animal multicellularity.
↗2013Regulated multicellularity
The aggregative stage is governed by a dynamic phosphosignalling programme.
↗2016A dynamic regulatory genome
Epigenomic and functional-genomic maps revealed how regulatory programmes change across the life cycle.
↗2016The roots of cell differentiation
Proteomics uncovered extensive remodelling of proteins and phosphosignalling between cell states.
↗2018Introducing genes
A transfection method turned Capsaspora into a tractable experimental system.
↗2020Mapping the cell-cycle programme
Cell-cycle transcriptomics revealed 801 periodically expressed genes and a cyclin–CDK system with an ancestral temporal architecture.
↗2022Editing the genome
An independent team extended the Capsaspora toolkit, using homologous recombination for targeted genome modification.
↗2023A chemical language for aggregation
Calcium and lipoproteins regulate multicellular aggregation in Capsaspora.
↗2025 · PREPRINTA quantitative model of aggregation
Experiments, transcriptomics and mathematical modelling establish Capsaspora as a predictive system for studying aggregative multicellularity.
↗2026Beyond Diffusion
Bayesian learning strategies reveal how single-cell life can integrate environmental information.
↗CONTINUE EXPLORING
