OUR RESEARCH
One question. Many organisms. Genomes, cell biology and evolution brought together in one shared endeavour.
QUESTION FIRST
Our laboratory is not built around one species or one technology. We discover, cultivate and compare the organisms that can reveal different parts of the same historical transition: the origin of multicellular animals.
SIX CONNECTED PROGRAMMES
We use broad taxon sampling and comparative genomics to reconstruct the genetic and cellular potential of the unicellular ancestors of animals. Every additional lineage changes the inference—and reveals what other lineages have lost.
Explore gene origins ↗
Many genes associated with animal adhesion, signalling, transcription and differentiation originated before animals. We ask how these ancient modules were regulated, connected and integrated into an operating system capable of coordinating multicellular life.
Explore the discoveries ↗Clonal division is not the only plausible route. Aggregative multicellularity and cellularisation from multinucleate cells offer alternative hypotheses. Our organisms allow these routes to be compared experimentally rather than assumed.
Meet the organisms ↗From single cells
to multicellular life
Nuclei divide within one cell; cellularisation follows.
Independent cells gather into a collective.
Daughter cells stay together after division.
The unknown is not peripheral to this field—it can transform it. Entire lineages close to animals remain known only through environmental DNA. Finding them can alter our reconstruction of the ancestor, reveal unexpected biology and open questions that cannot yet be imagined.
Find the missing relatives ↗
Cells coordinate growth, differentiation and collective behaviour while energy and nutrients fluctuate. We investigate whether metabolic state and energy availability helped cells make the transition from individual lives to coordinated collectives—and how metabolism continues to shape the balance between individuality and cooperation.
Explore Capsaspora ↗Can energy shape
the decision to cooperate?
Cancer disrupts the cellular cooperation on which multicellular life depends. We are testing whether tumour progression and therapy resistance share cellular behaviours or regulatory responses with aggregation, stress and dormancy in unicellular relatives of animals. We are investigating whether Capsaspora could offer an experimentally tractable system in which to examine these possibilities.
Meet the experimental system ↗
THE COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE
The answer lies in the differences between them: what each lineage retained, lost, reinvented or uses in an unexpected cellular context.
THE WORKING HYPOTHESIS
It emerged when ancient molecular and cellular capabilities became integrated, coordinated and evolvable in a new multicellular system.
