Lingfeng Kong

This study identifies shell-forming cell types in Pacific oysters and shows they evolved from ancestral epithelial-secretory systems in Spiralia.

This study identifies a biphasic regulatory program for shell formation in bivalve molluscs and shows how dynamic chromatin remodeling allows evolutionary innovation within conserved gene regulatory networks.

The paper uses long-read sequencing to analyze mitogenomes in 178 mollusk species, revealing extensive size variation and suggesting evolutionary patterns of expansion in bivalves.