A team led by Joseph Ryan and other UF researchers will study ocean comb jellies to derive insights about how brains began. They hope their work will help them reconstruct the nervous system of the first animal, which lived close to a billion years ago, and shed light on evolutionary changes that may have led to the nervous systems of modern animals.
“We published the first ctenophore genome in 2013, and one of the big questions that emerged from that study was how are the nervous systems of ctenophores and other animals related,” Ryan said. “This question is fundamental to understanding…what evolutionary events gave rise to the brains and nervous systems of today's animals.”
View Related Expert Profiles: Go to Source
