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Date of Award
Spring 2013
Document Type
Restricted Thesis: Campus only access
Degree Name
Bachelor of Science
Department
Biology
First Advisor
Dr. April Hill
Abstract
Sponges, belonging to the phylum Porifera, are the earliest branching animals in existence today (Muller, 2003). Despite having diverged from the rest of the metazoan lineage roughly 600 million years ago (Nosenko et al., 2013), the majority of transcription factor, signal transduction, and structural gene families specific to the animal lineage are present in sponges (Srivastava et al., 2010). This is surprising because sponges do not possess any neurons, organs or tissues, yet have many genes that are essential in the development of organs in more complex animals. Thus, studying the functions of metazoan-conserved genes in sponges may provide a possible glimpse into primitive molecular functions of the genes in the ancestor that is common to all animals.
Recommended Citation
Posfai, Dora, "Studying gene regulatory programs using the freshwater sponge, Ephydatia muelleri : the evolution of the Pax/Six network and the Wnt pathway" (2013). Honors Theses. 30.
https://scholarship.richmond.edu/honors-theses/30