In the spider Parasteatoda tepidariorum the transcription factor Ets4 is needed for cumulus integrity, dorsoventral patterning and for the activation of hunchback and twist expression.

The mouse gene Ythdc2 exemplifies an evolutionarily ancient family of crucial regulators of the transition from germline stem cell divisions to meiosis.

The discovery of a gene that regulates two segmentation mechanisms in spider embryos is fueling the ongoing debate about the evolution of this crucial developmental process.

Sox21b-1 regulates simultaneous formation of anterior segments and addition of posterior segments in a spider, which resembles segmentation in long- and short-germ insects, and suggests SoxB regulation of segmentation is an ancestral feature of arthropods.

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.

Hairless emerged as an evolutionarily novel regulatory protein that replaced an ancestral paradigm of direct co-repressor recruitment by Suppressor of Hairless, its partner transcription factor in the Notch signaling pathway.

Tucked within a well-known story of diverging gene function is a single enhancer encoding two inseparable specificities that regulates two adjacent genes, each with different spatiotemporal expression patterns.

The genome of a tiny tomato pest reveals mechanisms that underlie metazoan genome reduction.

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