Movers and shakers: evolution and development of the mesoderm.
Groundbreaking research in a wide variety of organisms has begun to address fundamental questions regarding the evolutionary origin of mesoderm and how patterning of this emergent tissue layer has played a central role in the diversification of metazoan body plans. However, attempts to synthesize this growing body of research have been limited. To address this perceived gap, a symposium entitled "Movers and Shakers: The Evolution and Development of Mesoderm" was held at the 2006 Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology Conference in Orlando, Florida. The papers derived from this symposium cover a broad range of organisms and approaches. It was our intention that integration of the data and methodologies from these diverse research programs would generate new hypotheses and collaborative efforts to decipher fundamental questions of mesoderm development and evolution.
Davidson
Brad
B
Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Cardiovascular Research Program, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85724, USA. bjd18@email.arizona.edu
D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D015509:Developmental Biology; D023281:Genomics; D008648:Mesoderm / Q000502:physiology*; D009024:Morphogenesis / Q000502:physiology*