MULTICELLGENOMEBACK TO THE STORY ↙

OUR RESEARCH

How did unicellular life
become an animal?

One question. Many organisms. Genomes, cell biology and evolution brought together in one shared endeavour.

Follow the question↓

QUESTION FIRST

The organism does not
define the question.

The question leads us
to the right organism.

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.

HOW WE WORK

01Ask the fundamental questionWhat are we trying to explain?
02Develop competing ideasMore than one possible history
03Find the right organismsDifferent windows onto the past
04Build experimental systemsCulture · genome · tools
05Test against evidenceCompare · revise · test again

SIX CONNECTED PROGRAMMES

Different scales.
One evolutionary problem.

01RECONSTRUCT

What was the unicellular ancestor of animals like?

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.

Taxon samplingPhylogenomicsComparative genomics
Explore gene origins ↗
Evolutionary tree of animals and their closest unicellular relatives
02DECODE

How was the first animal assembled?

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.

Gene regulationEpigenomicsProteomicsSignalling
Explore the discoveries ↗
AdhesionSignallingTranscriptionCell cycleCell statesANIMAL OS
03EXPERIMENT

Which cellular route led to animals?

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.

AggregationCoenocytesCellularisationCell states
Meet the organisms ↗
Clonal, coenocytic and aggregative hypotheses for animal multicellularity
04DISCOVER

How can the unknown change what we think we know?

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.

Environmental diversityIsolationCultivationNew model systems
Find the missing relatives ↗
Earth representing the search for missing unicellular relatives
05ENERGY

Did metabolism help multicellularity begin?

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.

MetabolismEnergy constraintsCellular decisionsCollective behaviour
Explore Capsaspora ↗
Conceptual illustration of energy states becoming coordinated as cells form a collective
Energy state · information flow · collective behaviour
06REVERSIBILITY

Can animal origins help us understand cancer?

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.

Cancer evolutionCell cooperationDormancyTherapy resistance
Meet the experimental system ↗
Conceptual illustration of a cell departing from coordinated multicellular behaviour
Cellular cooperation · stress · dormancy

THE COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE

No organism
contains all the answers.

The answer lies in the differences between them: what each lineage retained, lost, reinvented or uses in an unexpected cellular context.

  • GENOMESWhat was possible?
  • REGULATIONWhen was it deployed?
  • CELL BIOLOGYWhat did it do?
  • COMPARISONWhat was ancestral?

THE WORKING HYPOTHESIS

The first animal was not
built from nothing.

It emerged when ancient molecular and cellular capabilities became integrated, coordinated and evolvable in a new multicellular system.

Explore our ideas ↗See the evidence ↗Open the gene portal ↗