Tatiana S. Lebedeva

This study identifies and characterizes Cilin, an ancient metazoan intermediate filament protein, showing its role in cilia arrangement and tissue architecture across ctenophores and other animals.

The paper investigates the specification of three germ layers in Nematostella vectensis, showing that MAPK, β-catenin, and Notch signaling segregate mesoderm and endoderm, suggesting triploblasty predates cnidarian-bilaterian divergence.

This study investigates the evolutionary history of Brachyury genes in Hydrozoa, identifying duplications and functional divergence in Dynamena pumila.

The paper shows that β-catenin signaling patterns the oral-aboral axis in Nematostella vectensis, but endoderm specification occurs opposite to nuclear β-catenin accumulation, suggesting this mechanism is a Bilateria-specific co-option.

The paper shows that four Frizzled receptors in Nematostella vectensis have partially redundant roles in oral-aboral axis patterning via cWnt signaling, but not in endoderm specification.

The paper identifies SoxC as a conserved regulator of neurosecretory lineages in Nematostella vectensis using single-cell RNA-sequencing.

The paper investigates β-catenin-dependent axial patterning in Nematostella and finds similar regulatory logic to deuterostomes, suggesting a common evolutionary origin.

The paper investigates apolar gastrulation in Dynamena pumila, showing that morphological polarity emerges after gastrulation while molecular axial patterning occurs during it, and that the morphological axis is robust to cWnt perturbations.