Grigory Genikhovich

The paper identifies a novel gene, beer belly, as a regulator of segmentation in spiders using single-cell RNA sequencing and shows its evolutionary loss in mammals and holometabolous insects.

The paper develops a toolkit of membrane-localising tags tested across ten animal species to identify effective signals for targeting proteins to the plasma membrane.

The paper shows that mobile Chordin is necessary for BMP signaling to establish a secondary axis in Nematostella, supporting a BMP shuttling mechanism over local inhibition.

The paper shows BMP signaling promotes neurogenesis in cnidarians and suggests its 'anti-neural' role in vertebrates is a side effect of its ancestral function in dorsoventral patterning.

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.

The paper creates a whole-body atlas of BMP signaling activity in the sea anemone Nematostella, revealing diverse domains of activity beyond axial patterning.

The paper identifies ZSWIM4-6 as a novel BMP signaling modulator in the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis through ChIP-Seq analysis of pSMAD1/5 target genes.

The paper reports chromosome-level genome assemblies of two sea anemones and finds conserved chromosomal blocks across cnidarians and bilaterians, but loss of microsynteny in Hox and NK clusters.

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.