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.

Crucial functions of Toll signalling during dorsoventral axis formation might have evolved convergently in flies and crickets.

ChIP-seq analysis reveals BMP signaling targets in a cnidarian and identifies ZSWIM4-6 as a dampener of the pSMAD1/5 gradient and a potential conveyor of the BMP-mediated gene repression.

Phenotypic evolution can originate from variations in very precocious developmental events, starting even before fecundation, during the fabrication of the egg in the mother's gonad.

The gene regulatory network of Nodal signaling, underpinning body axes patterning, was evolved specifically in cephalochordate lineage.

Interactions between Hox and TALE genes, which generate bilaterally symmetrical body plans, originated in early multicellular animals.

Maternal Gdf3 and Nodal are interdependent obligatory cofactors in the fundamental patterning of the vertebrate embryonic axis of zebrafish.

Cuttlefish embryos reveal that cephalopod mollusks evolved specialized arms and tentacles by activating the same genetic circuits that control development of limbs in arthropods and vertebrates.

Patterning of the dorsal-ventral axis in zebrafish is mediated by a graded source-sink mechanism in which diffusing BMP, produced from a ventrally biased source, is inhibited by dorsally-produced chordin.

Mathematical modelling, together with super-resolution imaging in Arabidopsis, demonstrates that a recently proposed coarsening model for meiotic crossover interference can explain the dynamic patterning of crossovers in many contexts, including in zyp1 and pch2 chromosome structure mutants.