An investigation of transposable element evolution in a group of long-term asexual animals shows that many of the predicted effects of asexuality are not observed.

Discovery of a novel neuropeptide signalling system in a deuterostome invertebrate reveals the evolutionary origin of prolactin-releasing peptide and its relationship with neuropeptides in protostome invertebrates.

Wnt/beta-catenin signaling is essential for the specification of dorsal cell fate in amphioxus, suggesting a common evolutionary origin for the formation of the dorsal organizer in chordates.

Evolutionary reconstruction of the ecdysis pathway shows that its major elements are present in the majority of metazoans, providing evidence that they originated much earlier than currently assumed.

The animal phylogeny of glutamate receptors indicates that vertebrate types do not account for all receptor classes originated during evolution, neither are they the pinnacle of a linear evolutive process.

The genomes of animal progenitors evolved as mosaics of old, new, rearranged, and repurposed protein domains, genes and pathways and paved the way for the origin and evolution of animals.

The symbiotic relationship between Hydra and Chlorella is driven by metabolic co-dependence and characterized by changes in the photobiont genome in terms of lack of genes essential in free-living algae.

The coding sequences of a very highly conserved family of neurogenic transcription factors from different species have evolved to generate proteins that have different life times causing them to display quantitatively different neural induction potentials.

Collagen IV is a primordial extracellular matrix component associated with the transition to animal multicellularity, and enabled the formation and evolution of epithelial tissues.

A new component, CatSper zeta, is required for continuous alignment of the calcium channel along the sperm's tail and is crucial for normal sperm swimming behavior and fertility.