Evolution of the Metazoa

Daniel Jackson’s group

Daniel Jackson's research group is focused on understanding the events that accompanied and drove the diversification of the Metazoa during the early Cambrian. One prominent feature of this expansion is the widespread adoption of various biomineralisation strategies during a relatively narrow geological window. Currently, little is known about the genetic basis of invertebrate biomineralisation, and the way in which these processes evolved. For many metazoans, biomineralisation begins very early in life, often during a larval phase, and is a fundamental feature of the developmental process. An understanding of the developmental pathways and biochemical reactions that generate larval shells, spicules and other skeletal elements is therefore essential to our interpretation of metazoan evolution. To address these questions we are currently focusing on the Mollusca, a highly diverse group of Lophotrochozoans whose success can in part be attributed to an incredibly varied range of shell morphologies. We currently employ the freshwater pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis as our workhorse model, and combine this with the bioinformatic wealth of metazoan genomic data to dissect the molecular events that generated this shelled diversity.

An advantage to studying the Mollusca is that this group is one of the most morphologically diverse of the animal kingdom, and is a representative of the much understudied Lophotrochozoa. With representative model organisms established for groups such as the Ecdysozoa (Drosophila, C. elegans), deuterostomes (urchins, mouse, frog, chicken) and early branching metazoan taxa (cnidarians, sponges and Trichoplax) we hope that in developing L. stagnalis as an accessible model for functional molecular studies we will gain insight into how the regulation of molluscan development differs from other taxa, and how these differences supported the generation of such immense diversity.