Lancelets, or amphioxus, are small worm-like marine animals that spend most of their lives buried in the sea floor, filter-feeding through jawless, ciliated mouths. The vertebrate affinities of these ...

Those of you who took high school biology may remember the lancelet, also known as the amphioxus. Its simplified body plan is notable for containing a number of features that it shares in common with ...

Vertebrate evolution was accompanied by two rounds of whole genome duplication followed by functional divergence in terms of regulatory circuits and gene expression patterns. As a basal and ...

The genome sequence of a species of amphioxus, an iconic organism in the history of evolutionary biology, opens up a fresh vista on the comparative investigation of chordates and vertebrates. The ...

A primitive, worm-like marine animal that spends most of its time burrowed in sand is a hot commodity to marine biologists thanks to what its genome could tell them about vertebrate evolution.

(Phys.org) -- An evolutionary leap made at the bottom of the ocean over 500 million years ago gives new insights into the causes of human diseases such as diabetes, cancer and neurological disorders, ...

Research on the genome of a marine creature led by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego is shedding new light on a key area of the tree of life. Linda Holland, a research ...

In a primitive marine organism, scientists find photosensitive cells that may be ancestral to the "circadian receptors" in the mammalian retina. Among the animals that are appealing "cover models" for ...

This is the head of the marine invertebrate amphioxus (Branchiostoma floridae), magnified 15 times. Amphioxus are the most ancient of the chordates (animals whose features include a nerve cord), ...

Research on the genome of a marine creature is shedding new light on a key area of the tree of life. Because amphioxus is evolving slowly -- its body plan remains similar to that of fossils from the ...